The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) scrapped its
ranking of the top 10 websites in China, taking heed of continued
criticism regarding the credibility of the much publicised poll, because
of the underdeveloped status of the mainland Internet market, a senior
executive at CNNIC said.
Before it was axed, the poll had been part of the biannual "Statistical
Report on China's Internet Network Development".
"The poll conducted by CNNIC has been temporarily been put on hold,"
confirmed CNNIC deputy office director Wu Yangyi, adding that
"considering the development of websites in the country, the situation
is not mature for us to conduct the poll at the present."
In June this year, leading mainland websites and other industry
institutions had criticised the poll, which asked mainland Internet
users to identify their most preferred top 10 websites, saying that the
poll was prone to manipulation, while also qustioning the methodology of
the ranking.
Leading industry experts complained that there were possibilities of
cheating in the CNNIC ratings and although CNNIC had been trying to
avoid this, it was impossible to prevent.
Also, the lack of differentiation between different types of websites
being polled in China made it impossible to draw any conclusions from
the ratings.
Game pages, ecommerce sites and web portals must be measured according
to different standards if a meaningful ranking of the most popular
websites is to be determined.
But although websites have criticised the poll in the past, they have
also found it difficult to stay away and lose out on the opportunity to
be named as China's top 10 websites.
While the winner of the last poll Sina.com opposed the ranking and CEO
Wang Zhidong did not attend the conference announcing the Web winners,
the website did not remove itself from CNNIC consideration.
The survey has in the past been an important marketing tool in raising a
website's profile and has been instrumental for venture capital
fundraising and attracting online advertising.
Until last year, the poll was given little attention, but with an
increasing number of websites and escalating competition for dwindling
cash reserves, methods of raising the company profile have also
risen.
Considering the facts, industry experts agree that it is best to halt
the poll, while they also agree that the CNNIC semiannual "Statistical
Report on China's Internet Network Development" which CNNIC will
continue to conduct - is otherwise useful.
The statistical report is issued every January and July and covers data
including statistics on the number of China Internet subscribers,
registered domain names, technical details on international bandwidth of
the networks, as well as the number of websites.
Further sections look at geographic distribution and other
characteristics of Internet subscribers, as well as Internet usage,
including user habits and opinions on Internet-related topics.
So far there are few alternatives to the official CNNIC report and lack
of standardisation of research methodology remains a problem in the
mainland.
"What we need in China is different types of research so that we can
cross reference and come up with a result, says DoubleClick country
manager for China Kelvin Cheng.
"It takes time for research services to establish themselves," he
continued, "but there are lots of companies coming into the market at
present."
But recommended Mr Cheng, "CNNIC is already widely accepted in the
industry so they should adopt new methodology and continue their
research."
While CNNIC is still debating if and how it will resume conducting the
poll, others are already predicting that transnational surveys eagerly
step in to replace the who's who in China's websites.
Source: CMM Intelligence.
