zillow.com Not on Top
December 21, 2009 by Alice Allan
On Friday, we drew attention to zillow.com’s announcement, based on comScore figures, that it had received more unique visitors in November than realtor.com. Now, zillow.com has retracted its statement, saying the comScore data may not be correct.
“After discussions with comScore, it appears that the comScore data we cite below may be unreliable and it includes a different approach to Zillow’s measurement than other sites,” zillow.com’s updated blog post explains.
As inman.com reports, zillow.com’s claim that it was the most visited US real estate website for November was based on a non-public report from comScore. zillow.com appeared top because comScore recently began using a new methodology to measure visits to zillow.com, but had not yet started using this methodology for other US real estate websites.
“If this sounds confusing to you, trust us — it is to us too,” zillow.com said. “We will certainly think twice about publishing comScore data moving forward.”
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I think the real lesson is that all these kind of sites (Alexa, ComScore, Compete etc) that are not actually plugged directly into the site like Google Analytics are pretty much just guessing. They may be useful for comparisons between sites, but no good for getting real figures.
Craig I tend to agree but am even more harsh on Alexa, Commscore. t I dont think they are good for anything than analysis on your own site.
To use them to compare different site is like running a political poll in Liverpool (Australia) and suggesting thats how the country sees things.