How Do We Measure the Popularity of an E-business Website? a Comparison of Top Ranking Websites.

Abstract

The popularity of a website is often judged by the amount of traffic it attracts. But the question of what is the best measure of site traffic is not simple. Should we consider the number of unique visitors (reach), the total number of visits including repeats (page views), just the number of return visits (revisits), or the average length of stay at during a visit (stickiness)? The problem is further complicated by the fact that it is not possible to track the entire online population in the whole world. Most web traffic providers only track the browsing behavior of a selected sample audience. Therefore it is difficult to know which website ranking list is the most reliable. This paper examines several top-100 most popular website ranking lists from a number of providers to determine how the ranks may be affected by the metrics used in web traffic measures.