Should Bloggers and Websites Ban comScore?

   comScore is an internet market research company providing marketing data and services to many of the Internet’s largest businesses. comScore tracks all internet data on its surveyed computers in order to study online behavior. But, since 90’s, there was complaints at Sillion Valley how comScore’s method of counting traffic websites, via a sample of users, was not correct.

But big companies never complain against comScore because of the fact that if you paid Comscore they manipulate your numbers, and if you were a small company and don’t perform well, you will suffer. The advertisers like comScore because they can make money out of it. As per report,Comscore did a “study” in 2005 on blogs with Gawker Media as a sponsor and  Gawker’s blogs did really well in the study. The only problem was that Comscore’s numbers were different than the SiteMeter traffic that Gawker and Weblogs Inc. were publishing at the time.

You must have heard the recent news. comScore will do the real metrics for your site if you pay them $10000 a year. Although, in the past, they criticized Google Analytics and Quantcast because their method of measurement are incorrect. But, now they say that direct traffic measurement or actual measurement in the server side is the best method. In real life consideration, Comscore has negligible value when Google Analytics, Compete.com and Quantcast allow you to publicly and freely track your stats. It is also kind of odd to think when internet industry can measure the traffic accurately what is the point of depending upon failed sample based method used in TV and Radio.