Quantcast
I feel sort of dumb that I didn't know about Quantcast.com until yesterday when my good friend Barbara of Connecticut (not to be confused with Barbara of San Diego, another good friend and poster here) alerted me to Quantcast.com. In the same vein as Alexa.com, Quantcast gives web site owners some valuable statistics (once your site meets some minimum traffic requirements.) But as an experienced analyst of web stats, I can tell you that Quantcast gives some really useful statistics that might enable you to explore various aspects of your web based business in some very helpful ways. In short, I give Quantcast a thumbs up at this point and it is different from Alexa in a most pleasing manner.
Here is what Wikipedia has to say, and I have put some of the crucial differences between Alexa and Quantcast in bold:
"Quantcast is a Web site that is based on viewing the statistics of other Web sites. Quantcast Corporation's prime focus is to analyze the Internet's Websites in order to obtain accurate statistics.
Like Alexa, Quantcast rates Webpages by ranks. However, Quantcast does not require a tool bar to be installed upon one's browser to obtain statistics. Instead participating websites voluntarily insert Quantcast HTML code inside Web pages they wish to have included in statistics.
This code allows Quantcast to keep track of the traffic directed towards those Web sites. Using this mechanism Quantcast can providethorough details about Web pages created by participating publishers. Some of this information includes, for example, whether the Web page viewer is a male or female, whether the average viewer makes $30,000 USD annually or $100,000 USD annually, the age group of the viewer and the amount of U.S. homes the Website reaches.
This information is provided by inference: comparing and correlating the information received from one participating publisher with another. The inferences are possible because the Quantcast code causes the user's browser to access Quantcast's servers, at which time they can log the user's IP address and information Quantcast places in cookies that are storedin the user's browser.
The cookies significantly aid in making inferences. Quantcast also provides affinities revealing other popular sites that the average viewer browses. This is possible by tracking "referrer"information that is normally included as part of every HTTP request made by theuser's browser. For instance a person browsing a page on Quantcast aimed towards music might also browse sites based on music downloads. "
Quantcast is providing really valuable data about traffic on our start-up, www.employaid.com.
As with many good things, Quantcast requires patience. Add the script to your site and wait. Quantcast will add successively more and more data categories as it begins to track the site over time. It may take about a month or more until all fields are revealing information. It is worth the wait, and when you sign on and fine a new bit of info., it is like a reward for checking in.
Quantcast is brilliant. It fills the knowledge void, as it answers the question of where site visitors are coming from, and in a voyeuristic way, where else they are hanging out on the Internet. Enjoy it while it is free. The data it spits out will be invaluable to publishers and advertisers across the Internet.
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