Web analytics, web metrics, and how to use them to track and improve conversions

DIGG wants to be sold, if we can believe the news, but there is disagreement on how much traffic, or eyeballs DIGG gets.  I don't think the amount pageviews, visits or uniques is enough information to prove, one way or the other, that DIGG is worth 150 Million Dollars.   TechCrunch (whose Web 2.0 party in NYC I'll attend next month) says:

"San Francisco-based startup Digg has been in recent acquisition discussions with a number of companies, including News Corp., according to multiple sources close to the negotiations. However, the company was unable to land an offer in the price range they’re looking for - at least $150 million - and will likely close a Series B round of financing instead."

OK, Comscore says DIGG gets 1.4 Million Uniques a month and Quantcast says Digg gets 500,000 uniques a month - but Quantcast's numbers are estimations based on scientific data they produce.....I know - I met with Quantcast last month in NYC and they explained to me what they do and how they do it.   Unless Digg is willing to put QuantCasts's Javascript tag on their pages - Quantcast's numbers will not be 100% accurate - in this case, the numbers Quantcast comes up with are too low  - I don't believe those numbers but I like the QuantCast services which are currently free. 

In fact, if you read through to the end of this post - I'll give you what I think are Digg's real numbers.

So that's like saying DIGG gets a little over 400,000 Unique Visitors a week.

Personally, what's the big deal - if DIGG has analytics running - even AWStats - they should be able to prove how many Uniques they have....and it their not running analytics than can give them real number - that's just dumb.  All DIGG would have to do is install Google Analytics - and they prove one way or the other what they get in traffic.

 In fact, HitWise says that Digg and "select.nytimes.com" get about as many page impressions - HitWise data might be more accurate than Comscore because Comscore data is estimated traffic based on a Survey Group they create (ie: say a group of "Laywyers" - they have to create a group large enough to make the sample data valid).  

I mentioned a couple of months ago the audience of DIGG and the NYTimes was much different.  Hitwise released some data to Search Engine Watch - but it's in percentages - not hard numbers.

1. -Digg.com’s US market share of visits increased 231% comparing the week ending October 21, 2006 versus the week ending October 22, 2005
2.  -Digg.com US market share of visits increased 176% comparing September 2006 versus September 2005
3. -Digg.com is the third most visited website within the Hitwise US News and Media - IT category for the week ending October 21, 2006
4. -Digg.com is the ranked at 114 most visited website within the Hitwise US News and Media category for the week ending October 21, 2006
5. -Digg.com received 55% of its US traffic from Google for the week ending October 21, 2006

This is my point .... if DIGG says they have 20 million visits a month - they should be able to prove it - otherwise ...don't say it .. it creates doubt.

OK, here's the chart - I'll leave out the name of the site I'm comparing Digg with.

Here's the thing - the actual number of pageviews for the large site is about half what Digg shows, per month, and the actual number of visits is about 25% the number of pageview - therefore, Digg's numbers which look double to the large site - would be half of it shows (about 200,00 PV's per day) and and at 7or 8 pageviews per visit - they could have 20 million visitors a month - and I think between 10-12 million uniques a month.

In fact, in comparing Quantcast's numbers with a real site - Quantcast showed 1/30th the actual number of unique visitors per month based on website analytics. 

Therefore, Digg is right to seek financing and not sell at this time, based on what I'm seeing.