STATS: comScore Ranks the Top Japanese Web Sites for March 2008

Ed: USA brands are top exporters, but local brands are growing faster.

comScore Ranks the Top Japanese Web Sites for March 2008

End of School Year Prompts Visits to Travel and Entertainment Sites 
 
Yahoo! Sites Maintains Commanding Lead in Japanese Market  

TOKYO, JAPAN, May 7, 2008 comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its March 2008 rankings of the largest and fastest-growing Internet properties and site categories in Japan, based on datafrom the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service. With the past school year coming to a close in March, many people in Japan turned to the Web to prepare for the new school year and to research graduation celebrations and trips. Online gaming destinations Konami and NHN Corporation also experienced increases as spring vacation meant more time for online games.

“The end of the school year is a busy time for people in Japan, as many plan graduation celebrations or their spring breaks in March before returning to classes in April,” said Maru Sato, Managing Director of comScore Japan. “Travel sites such as Jalan.net and Mapion.co.jp saw traffic increase as people prepared for their vacations, while restaurant navigation destination Hotpepper.jp and entertainment destination site Walkerplus.com also experienced significant gains.”

Top 10 Gaining Properties by Number of Japanese Unique Visitors*  March 2008 vs. February 2008 Age 15+ Home and Work Locations**  Source: comScore World Metrix
Property	Total Unique Visitors (000)
	Feb-2008	Mar-2008	% Change
Total Internet : Total Audience	54,395	54,935	1
MAINICHI.JP	4,678	6,062	30
WALKERPLUS.COM	2,157	2,785	29
Konami	2,147	2,645	23
JALAN.NET	3,214	3,926	22
VEOH.COM	2,712	3,162	17
Adobe Sites	5,840	6,806	17
NHN Corporation	4,589	5,297	15
WITH2.NET	3,985	4,589	15
MAPION.CO.JP	4,997	5,751	15
HOTPEPPER.JP	2,631	3,023	15

*Ranking based on the top 100 Japanese properties in March 2008.

** Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

 

 

Top 10 Properties for March 2008

 

Top 10 Properties by Number of Japanese Unique Visitors*  March 2008 vs. February 2008 Age 15+ Home and Work Locations**  Source: comScore World Metrix
Mar-08 Rank	Feb-08  Rank	Property	Total Unique Visitors (000)      Mar-08
N/A	N/A	Total Internet : Total Audience	54,935
1	1	Yahoo! Sites	44,031
2	2	Google Sites	34,305
3	3	Rakuten Inc	29,344
4	4	Microsoft Sites	29,252
5	5	FC2 inc.	27,608
6	6	NTT Group	27,406
7	7	GMO Internet Group	25,225
8	8	Livedoor	22,740
9	9	Nifty Corporation	22,262
10	10	Wikipedia Sites	21,844

*Ranking based on the top 100 Japanese properties in March 2008.

** Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

 

About comScore 

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/boilerplate

Google Dominates Europe, but Eastern EU Sites Gain Share

from ClickZ News Blog

Today, ComScore released its March data on European search engine market share. Unsurprisingly Google sites came out on top, commanding 79 percent of searches across the continent. Yahoo and Microsoft came in fourth and fifth place, each with about 2 percent of search market share, respectively.

Worth noting however, is the increasing share for engines in the Eastern European markets, which are dominated by non-English language search technology.

Two Polish properties, Nasza-Klaska.pl and QCL Ricardo have shown considerable relative growth in comparison to ComScore’s February figures. Nasza-Klaska.pl clocked up 1.3 percent of European searches in March, up from 1.1 percent in February. QCL Ricardo also increased to 1.2 percent in March.

In addition, Yandex, Russia’s premier search facility trumped both Microsoft and Yahoo with its 2.2 percent share, slightly below the 2.3 percent it managed in February.

“With Russia’s online population now the fastest growing in Europe, it is likely that some of these local search engines will continue to gain traction and market share,” Jack Flanagan, EVP of comScore said in a statement.

NEWS: Web Metrics and Grains of Salt

By BRIAN STELTER 

Perhaps Internet metrics should come with a warning label: “handle with care.”

Stock in the measurement firm comScore slid in after-hours trading on Thursday after Google reported surprisingly strong first quarter earnings. Why the decline? Analysts were primed for a poor performance from Google after three straight months of comScore reports showing a slowdown in paid clicks on the Web giant’s sites…

Why ComScore’s Google Paid Click Estimates Are Not Predictive Of Google’s Revenues

from TechCrunch by Erick Schonfeld

After Google’s earnings call last week, Google’s stock jumped on strong results and comScore’s took a temporary hit. Many analysts and pundits were using comScore’s estimates of flattening paid-click advertising growth at Google to conclude that Google’s overall revenue growth would also be flat. Yet Google reported 42 percent year-over-year revenue growth, and 7 percent quarter-over-quarter revenue growth. In contrast, comscore had estimated 1.8 percent growth in U.S. paid clicks for the quarter.

Since Google gets a huge chunk of its revenues from search ads, there should be some correlation between a slowdown in paid-clicks and a slowdown in overall revenues. Yet as we first noted last February, historically the correlation between comScore’s U.S. paid-click estimates and Google’s actual quarterly results has been hit or miss. This time was no different. During the earnings conference call, CFO George Reyes addresses the paid-clicks issue directly by saying:

Now let’s look at aggregate paid clicks growth. Aggregate paid clicks include clicks related to ads served on Google properties, as well as ads served on our partner sites. Aggregate paid clicks grew approximately 20% over Q1 2007 and approximately 4% over Q4.

The Real Google-Comscore Scandal: Investors Who Won’t Take Responsibility For Decisions

from Silicon Alley Insider by Henry Blodget

Will the screaming never end? As we reported on Friday, investors who lost money shorting Google (GOOG) into Thursday’s conference call wasted no more than a nanosecond in scapegoating Comscore (SCOR). With global anger boiling over, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times pounced on the scandal over the weekend.

COMSCORE’S BOGUS, INACCURATE CLICK DATA COST INVESTORS MILLIONS!

It’s a sexy story. If only it were true.

As we noted on Friday, Comscore’s data about Google’s US paid clicks:

1. Was not just directionally accurate, but close to being plain old accurate: Google’s US clicks decelerated significantly in Q1. They almost certainly grew faster than the 2% Comscore reported, but it’s unlikely they grew faster than, say, 9% (Remember: As we and many other analysts made clear throughout the quarter, US paid clicks are not the same as the 20% global click number Google reported on the call).
2. Prompted analysts to cut their estimates–which is the only reason Google exceeded consensus. In other words, by correctly identifying a trend in Google’s US clicks, Comscore’s data helped the market see Google’s US deceleration earlier.

Ed: Complex metrics problem – comScore correctly reported decline in same store clicks. Wall Street monitors overall growth and overlooked click decline. International and search share growth will parallel USA same store results.

Google can hide the problem by growing Youtube video and DoubleClick banner revenues. So far, these results have been, as Google reports, inconsequential.

View	Google’s Search and International Growth Hides Decline in Clicks

View NEWS: Cookie Deletion Inflates User Metrics 

View NEWS: New Study Shows that Heavy Clickers Distort Display Advertising Click-Through 

View ANALYSIS: Internet Consolidation or Fragmentation?

View	ANALYSIS: Who Earns the Page View?

April 21, 2008

Google AdSense Publishers Report: Clicks Not Being Counted

WebmasterWorld members are reporting that they’re logging into their Google AdSense accounts and are finding that AdSense is reporting much lower clicks. One person in particular said that his ads are showing zero clicks but even had it clicked on by someone “overseas” to see if it was a problem on Google’s end).

Everyone agrees that “something is weird” and only martinibuster suggests that you should check your server logs for an indication of what’s happening with your ad clicks. Till then, though, on April 17th and on the 18th, this seemed to be a problem. (Ed note: As of this writing — the 18th at 4PM EST — this issue hasn’t been resolved as no forum members report anything but strangeness.)

ANALYSIS: The Viral Nature of Top Widgets

Widgets show as panels, sections, or links on a user’s desktop, personal page, social profile, blog, website … This changes impression counting as any Internet page can be logged by dozens of IChannels as their views.

Viral discovery of widgets through friends at social networks has outgrown use of widgets on desktops, personal portals, and blogs – and perhaps even advertising widgets.

Apple – Downloads – Dashboard – Top 50

Top 50 Dashboard Widgets. … This widget brings you the feed from “A New Mac
Tip Every Day” in your Dashboard.

Yahoo! Widgets: useful, fun, beautiful little apps for Mac and Windows

1000s of free Widgets help you save time by bringing your favorite content and …

comScore Widget Metrix

These objects are most often referred to as “widgets,” but may also include other naming conventions such as Facebook “applications” and Google “gadgets. (tables)

MySpace.com Widgets Reach Largest U.S. Audience

In November 2007, nearly 148 million U.S. Internet users viewed widgets, representing 81 percent of the total audience. MySpace.com widgets had the widest audience, reaching more than 57 million Internet users, while Slide.com ranked second with 39.2 million viewers. Google.com has the sixth widest widget-viewing audience with more than 19 million viewers.

“Top Friends” Tops Facebook Application Rankings

The inaugural Facebook application rankings revealed that more than 20 million Facebook visitors, or 61 percent of the site’s U.S. audience, engaged with an application in November. Visitors between the ages of 18-24 were twice as likely as the average Facebook visitor to engage with applications, while those aged 25 and older were less likely than average to exhibit this behavior.

Widget Definitions

The current universe of widgets is defined as embedded Shockwave Flash objects; certain JavaScript objects (e.g. Technorati, Feedburner, AddThis;) and Facebook applications. The comScore Widget Metrix service will evolve in its tracking of widget file types as the market dynamics and content delivery systems change. The report currently focuses on the individual widgets, and not the platforms that deliver them. Desktop widgets (i.e. Apple, Google, Yahoo desktop apps) are not included in the reporting.

Web widget From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The web widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation. They are derived from the idea of code reuse. Other terms used to describe web widgets including: gadget, badge, module, capsule, snippet, mini and flake. Web widgets often but not always use DHTML, JavaScript, or Adobe Flash.

Technorati Widgets: Blog Widgets

This widget displays the top five news stories from mainstream media sites … The Top Searches Widget shows the ten most popular search terms from our …

RockYou

is a leading provider of applications and widgets on the web. RockYou widgets include photo slideshows, glitter text, customized Facebook applications and voicemail accessories that are simple to use and enable people to frequently refresh their online style. Founded in 2006, RockYou has over 35 million users, serving over 180 million widget views per day in more than 200 countries.

About Slide

Slide is the largest personal media network in the world, reaching 144 million unique global viewers each month and more than 30 percent of the U.S. Internet audience.

TypePad – Widgets for your Blog – AdaptiveBlue Last.fm Top Albums …

AdaptiveBlue Last.fm Top Albums Widget. adaptive-blue-logo.png. Display your Last.fm Top Albums on your Typepad blog using this cool SmartLinks Widget. …

FLANTURE: Top 5 Flash Widgets in 2007

One of those web related trends was apperance of new widgets as ornaments for blogs but some of them were also very usefull. I made a list of Top 5 Flash …

NEWS: Cookie Deletion Inflates User Metrics

Here is the summary from a recent comScore study.

Summary

Assuming that proper Web traffic hygiene such as filtering “bots” and internal traffic is conducted correctly, it’s possible to explain most differences between panel-based data and server-based data with the following simple equation:

Difference = (Inflation Due to Cookie Deletion + Inflation Due to Cookie Blocking) * Inflation due to unfiltered International Traffic

Due to the multiplicative nature of these effects, the overall inflation can reach 10x or more. For example, a site that has a 2.5x cookie deletion inflation and 4.5x inflation due to international traffic will have a staggering overall inflation of 11.25x in its counting of unique visitors.

Deleted cookies disconnect users from their actions.

Request your copy of the Cookie Deletion White Paper at comScore.

STATS: Impressions

IChannels:
Top U.S. Parent Companies and Stickiest Brands on the Web, December 2007 – Jan 28, 2008 Traffic Patterns Top U.S. Parent Companies and Stickiest Brands on the Web, December 2007

Market Share of Display Ads by Genre, Neilsen

comScore Releases US Internet Year in Review
comScore Releases Its First Review of Latin American Internet Usage
comScore Issues Its First Review of Asia/Pacific Internet Usage
Europe Internet Audiences Jump – Russia Grows Most, Nordics Most Active

U.S. Search Engine Rankings, December 2007 – Feb 5, 2008 Search Tools Top core search engines and leading eRelated Stories

Top 10 US Social-Network and Blog Site Rankings Issued for Nov.
Top 10 US Social-Network and Blog Site Rankings Issued for Oct.
Top 10 US Social-Network, Blog, Web Brand Rankings Issued for Dec.

Music Sites Get Half a Million Visitors per Minute – Dec 11, 2006 Entertainment Digital music sites average a global daily peak of over half a million visitors per minute.

Online Games Market to Hit $4.4 Billion by 2010 – Aug 30, 2006 Entertainment The online game market is set to exceed $4 billion by 2010; gamers are identified in six distinct groups, each with compelling buying power distinctions.

AdNets:
Top 10 Search Terms in 10 Categories, January 2008 – Feb 7, 2008 Search Tools The month’s top search terms in 10 categories.

MaSP:
Top 50 Advertisers by Media Value in November, 2007 – Jan 29, 2008 Advertising/Marketing Rankings of the top 50 Internet advertisers by media value in November 2007.

Total Advertising
Market Share