2,000-Character URLs Too Much for Nielsen

Nielsen has apologised to clients for a 'flaw' in its web traffic methodology which has led to under-counting of web traffic in products including its NetView service.

Other services possibly affected, according to the company, include VideoCensus, MegaView Retail, MegaView Search, AdRelevance, WebRF and some custom research projects.

The problem relates to pages with very long URLs which are not recognised by the system, and which are increasingly used on social media and other sites, and affects stats for 'time on site'. The letter to clients stated: 'Our investigation has identified the major root cause of the decline in the US and several contributing factors' and said a similar analysis was being conducted in other countries.

The letter recommends 'limited use of data from the online audience measurement products' until the problem is properly analysed and fixed, and confesses: 'we need to do a better job keeping pace with the rapid evolution of the Internet.' The firm will provide bi-weekly progress reports.

As a result of the problems British measurement body UKOM (UK Online Measurement Company) has postponed the planned 10th November release of October data for its Audience Planning System (APS), launched in February. In a statement, UKOM noted that 'The primary cause relates to intermittent performance of the Nielsen system in processing URLs exceeding some 2,000 characters in length. Nielsen have found that any online session from a panellist that includes such a URL may be excluded from results.' [Yes that's two thousand characters].

Nielsen's President of media products Steve Hasker says the issue will be corrected in time for the December data set, to be released in January.

Web sites: www.nielsen.com and www.ukom.net.uk .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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