Nielsen-Netratings

Has anyone worked with them?

[ThePhoenix]

Has anyone worked with them? How are their services?

[cgrantski]

Which services and what's "how"?

I've always had great service from them in terms of responsiveness and intelligence. However their "services" have internal limitations and tradeoffs, just like everything. They do competitive info, demographics, surveys, analysis ... what are you looking at?

[ThePhoenix]

I am not familiar enough with their product offerings. I can tell you this. We are going to be using WebSideStory, Omniture, or CoreMetrics for our core analytics solution.

We have been approached by HitWise. I am looking for solutions that will help us report on things outside of our sandbox.

I submitted a request to Neilsen to have a rep contact me. I also noticed that ComScore could be an option.

[ThePhoenix]

What were the limitations that you experienced with Neilsen?

[cgrantski]

Phoenix - The main limitation with Nielsen in my opinion is the small number of sites for which they have data - something like 500 sites or domains. They get their info via phone surveys, and they ask people to recall the sites they went to (during the previous 30 days). Even if people were recalling correctly, the people are reacting yes-no to a limited list of sites offered by the surveyor.

And the end result is that almost all of the sites that I wanted information on were not in their databases.

They have a secondary way of getting data for less popular sites but it was extremely spotty. Comscore on the other hand went pretty deep.

[innocbystr]

They get their info via phone surveys, and they ask people to recall the sites they went to (during the previous 30 days). Even if people were recalling correctly, the people are reacting yes-no to a limited list of sites offered by the surveyor.

I've had Nielson-Netratings tracking software on my desktop for a couple of years now. Forgot all about it till I read this post. Best I recollect they have tracking software on thousands of computers.

[billygg]

you had mentioned Hitwise. i was approached by Hitwise as well last year, and did a test run with them. i find there data extremely valuable, as long as your comfortable with the price tag ;)

[cgrantski]

Hitwise does do some different and cool things.

The software on Bystander's computer is what I was talking about regarding a secondary but spotty way of getting data on more sites.