zeFrank and Rocketboom Spar Over Numbers

The videoblogging group is currently going back and forth on this issue. From Andrew at Rocketboom:

After some discrepancy, Ze Frank has laid into me because he doesn’t believe how he could only have a fraction of the audience size of Rocketboom.

I was pretty surprised because we have had some friendly emails recently and he has asked me about my stats but apparently didn’t believe me. I have even offered to have him come by and have a look but he would rather just assume I must be wrong I guess.

It turns out Ze receives about 30,000 downloads per day compared to Rocketboom which receives well over 300,000 per day.

Ze had this to say. Alexa even got in on the action and posted this graph on their homepage today.

graph2

Why does this matter? Advertising baby. Pageviews/Downloads/CPM Reliable stats are paramount to advertisers.

One of the smartest, well written commentaries on the issue came from FrozenNorth.

One point that is definitely worth reminding us of is:

Some ISPs (most notoriously AOL) will cache web pages on their internal network as a way to save bandwidth. When an AOL subscriber requests a page, the AOL proxy server will first check to see if it already has a copy–and if so, the subscriber gets it from the AOL proxy, and the request never hits the host site.

This is a very effective way to save bandwidth, but it can wreak havoc on server statistics. On my company’s website, as much as 25% of our traffic comes from AOL, and on the static pages we never see it in our logs (but we know it’s there because we still get requests for the dynamic web pages).

However, it is possible to configure your web server to instruct proxy servers (like AOL’s) to not cache your page. If Andrew set up his server this way but zeFrank didn’t, this could account for a large fraction of the discrepancy.

If you are into understanding your traffic, FrozenNorth’s post is jam up (as I used to say in High School).

3 Replies to “zeFrank and Rocketboom Spar Over Numbers”

  1. Yeah, I only linked to it so I could show off that traffic post. It was so well done!

    I have to say that zeFrank comes off looking like a ‘sour grapes’ kinda guy. Andrew is pretty smart, so he knows how to handle this sort of stuff well. He handled Amanda’s leaving with class, even when she really didn’t, and he’s managed to do well besides.

    That said, I don’t ‘get’ Rocketboom, but maybe I’m not their intended audience?

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