Nielsen/NetRatings has officially scrapped the use of page views in its rankings report and will be focusing more on how much time is spent by each visitor on the site.
A leading online measurement service will scrap rankings based on the longtime industry yardstick of page views and begin tracking how long visitors spend at the sites.
The move by Nielsen/NetRatings, expected to be announced Tuesday, comes as online video and new technologies increasingly make page views less meaningful.
Although Nielsen already measures average time spent and average number of sessions per visitor for each site, it will start reporting total time spent and sessions for all visitors to give advertisers, investors and analysts a broader picture of what sites are most popular. {Yahoo News via Steve Rubel}
Also read: “Are pageviews really obsolete?” I believe it’s high time to re-focus metrics from the age old pageviews to total time spent, especially with all that no-reload, ajaxy features on most sites. The growing pains though will be most felt on the advertising department where most people are still stuck with the idea of ad impressions and pageviews.
So, what’s my blog’s average time on site?
According to Google Analytics, it’s 1 minute and 39 seconds. Multiply that by the number of unique visitors and you get your daily total viewing time. Maybe, in the near future, total time spent will be the standards that will replace daily uniques/pageviews.
Tab browsing will not affect measurement of time spent. If you have ever subscribed to a porn site, you’ll know this.