Nielsen sharpens web evaluation

The product is seen as a significant upgrade over Nielsen's NetView panel research, which was based on a representative panel of at-home users. "Until now, we weren't able to measure how many users accessed websites from other locations," said Nielsen// NetRatings managing director Peter Steyn in a press statement. "The SiteCensus measurement system gives full insight in a site's total audience, which is of great value to media buyers and advertisers, as well as to the site's marketers and strategic planners." The SiteCensus product is an independent browser-based audience measurement tool that tracks website usage, including paths followed, content viewed and location of access. According to OneXeno MD Mike Zung, SiteCensus offers some key advantages over competing products such as WebTrends. "There are certain products which might be better but what they lack is they can be manipulated -- the difference is that Nielsen actually hosts the product on its server, and it strips out things that might boost statistics," said Xung. However, Xung also noted that SiteCensus does not measure people who do not use cookies, and would count multiple users at an internet café terminal as one. Leading Hong Kong news portal Next Media Interactive has already begun using SiteCensus, revealing almost 1.5 million unique browsers in September, compared to just 525,000 as measured by NetView.