Eric Peterson does not like Avinash Kaushik’s list of the top web analytics blogs (where Webmetricsguru.com came up as #2).

I think it’s an honor to be attacked by Eric Peterson:

" don’t mean to be rude but:

• Marshall Sponder doesn’t really post very much about web analytics, he just posts a lot and happens to have a nom-de-plume of "WebMetricsGuru"
  

I suppose Eric deserves the name more than I do; I did not chose the name of this blog, but I do write mostly about Web Analytics, and most of my posts have something about Web Analytics in them (and Search Engines too, which is my other focus).  And I write a lot about Art, but I think Web Analytics, at it’s foundation, is art, and what people really want to know, and hunger for, is meaning.

I might go out on a limb as say the Web Analyst of today could be an equivalent of the "Witch Doctor" of the African Tribes - we provide of meaning to all the wealth of data we collect to solve daily problems for our clients, much as a Witch Doctor, solved problems and gave insight to the Tribal members.  Our methods are entirely different yet we come up with answers, all the same.

Think that comparison is far fetched?  At SESNY06 where Eric Peterson ,spoke, along with three others, at a metrics session (last February) the session was about the overlays of data to create meaning and one of the speakers spoke of reconstructing the reason men came to a woman’s cosmetics site to buy gifts for their girl friends and wife’s at the last minute - all based on Web Analytics overlay data. Here’s what I wrote

"Neil described the construct of a "journey" as the merging of Persona’s and Behavioral data.  He gave case studies of a European retailer who thought their customers were mainly female, but whose actual audience of visitors turned out to be half male / half female.  Using Neil’s methodology he was able to target different "journeys" with a age/sex and likely hood to purchase.

note: the speaker, in this case, mentioned a "hunting journey" than men went on for the purpose of finding a gift for their girlfriends.  We almost have to go back to Carl Jung - to the use of symbolism to understand the motivation of Web Purchasers.    At the end of the day, we’re still just storytellers using Web Data to construct meaning. That is Art.  It’s telling a story.

At heart the Web Analyst is an artist, and that’s what I bring to Web Analytics.   The hunt for a gift reminds me of the ancient hunt of male hunters of the tribe undertook to find food for the rest of the tribe.

Eric Peterson can come up with a better list of top web analytics blogs if he likes (maybe he’s site will be on the top of that one) but if he does not like the list, attack the method, not the people on the list and their blogs.