Search Engine Wars, Part XXIV

As reported in Marketing Madness and Sticky Stuff, the total minutes on a website has replaced unique visits and total page views as the metric that Nielsen/NetRatings is using to rank websites.

Advertising Age - Digital - Measuring the Web Just Got More Complex-read article

From the article:

AOL media network used to rank fifth in Nielsen/NetRatings' online audience rankings, but last week it rocketed to first -- that's the kind of thing that can happen when the bean counter changes the beans.

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Here are the rankings:

Unique visitors: Google, Yahoo, MSN/Windows Live, Microsoft, AOL Media Network

Page views: Yahoo, Fox Interactive, Google, MSN/Windows Live, eBay

Total minutes: AOL Media Network, Yahoo, MSN/Windows Live, Fox Interactive, Google


So, the search engine wars have been reduced to:

• We are number one!
• No, we are!
• Sorry, but we are!
• According to Nielsen, we are number one!
• Well, we get more visitors!
• But, visitors stay on our site longer!
• Ha! Visitors read more at our site!

Meanwhile, MSN/Windows Live is solid at #3 and Fox Interactive and eBay are creeping into the rankings.

Tags: Nielsen rankings, search engine wars, metric changes