The release by Nielsen of the total minutes spent by users on the top 30 newspaper websites in the US has reignited the debate over how to measure success online.
According to this way of judging popularity, the top 10 are:
1 – NYTimes.com — 550,035
2 – USATODAY.com — 136,603
3 – washingtonpost.com — 145,083
4 – Wall Street Journal Online — 72,110
5 – Newsday — 28,203
6 – Boston.com — 79,712
7 – LA Times — 44,259
8 – SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle — 40,610
9 – New York Post — 37,346
10 – Village Voice — 10,092
But as Lost Remote asks, is total time spent better than unique users when ranking top news sites? Or is it a combination of both?
Web metrics are an inexact, exact science. We have figures, but do we have meaning? For example, in terms of time spent, less could be seen as better than more, as it could mean that a user came to a news site, quickly found out what they needed, and then left.
Ultimately no single measure is going to provide all the answers.
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