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

Read an article in the New York Times highlighting bias of online panels that comScore and NetRatings use titled How Many Site Hits? Depends Who’s Counting :

"...Condé Nast met with ComScore late last year to dispute the figures for Style.com. “They couldn’t really explain it, and they admitted as much,”

"...How many people visited Style.com, the online home of Vogue and W magazines, last month? Was it 421,000, or, more optimistically, 497,000? Or was the real number more than three times higher, perhaps 1.8 million? "

"...said Jim Spanfeller, president and chief executive of Forbes.com. By his calculation, Forbes.com had 11.6 million United States visitors last month, far more than the 7.5 million estimated by Nielsen/NetRatings and 5.8 million from ComScore."

"...Mr. Spanfeller of Forbes.com says the ratings companies’ figures at times have “no relationship to reality”; they in turn say that executives like Mr. Spanfeller are simply deceiving themselves about the popularity of their sites. "

Well, I tend to go with the numbers that come right out of the Web Analytics Platform - that's almost like gold to me ..... the stuff that comScore and NetRatings come up with is like a cheap form of tin (it's just a guess based on panels that don't actually represent the target audiences all that often).