Lies, damned lies and statistics - 04/2001

GoJobsite has issued a call for the industry to put its house in order, and adopt a standard, independently-verified system of site usage reporting.

The call comes at a time when shares in games website E-district have been suspended pending investigation into exaggerated site performance reports, and ties in with widespread investor and advertiser scepticism over the current state of Internet site traffic reporting.

GoJobsite marketing director Chris Newson commented: Recruiters are expected to make substantial online recruitment budget decisions on the basis of wholly inadequate site performance statistics.

Instead of being provided with information on jobsite usage that is as consistent, honest and accurate as possible, recruiters are fed a range of unverifiable visitor statistics, performance measures which are incomparable from site to site, and figures from panel-based surveys that consistently contradict one other.

Unverifiable site statistics do nothing to provide a usable measure of performance. No offline publication worth its salt would issue circulation figures that had not been subject to independent scrutiny. An advertiser would treat figures that had not independently verified with the great distrust they deserve.

To make matters worse, recruitment sites are confusing buyers by talking in the different languages of visitors, visits, unique hosts, views, impressions and hits.

Newson continued: Furthermore , while widely-quoted panel-based survey results such as NetValue and MMXI provide interesting ideas about possible trends, they do not give recruiters a reliable basis for effective decision-making. They show the behaviour of 'at home' users of all ages and types, but ignore the 'at work' behaviour of the focused professional 'at work' audience recruiters are desperate to reach.

This is an unacceptable situation, and one which is well within the power of the key players in our industry to clear up. We need to adopt a standard metrics reporting system, that is independent, respected and easily understood.

The good news is that this system already exists and is widely accepted in both the online and offline worlds - the ABC audit.

It is time for everyone in our industry to adopt this auditing system. Sites should issue only figures that have been audited by ABC; recruiters should accept only figures that have been audited by ABC; the recruitment media should publish only figures that have been audited by ABC.

GoJobsite receives over 800,000 visits per month - a figure verified by the ABC audits we have subjected ourselves to since July last year. A small number of other sites in our industry also go through the ABC process. There is no reason why all recruitment sites cannot submit their figures to the same scrutiny.

Compared to the millions of pounds spent with recruitment sites, the 1,500 cost of an audit is negligible. So, the question must be asked, why are all sites not using audited figures?

www.gojobsite.co.uk