Neilsen Retools metrics

Nielsen/NetRatings plans to drop its old methods of counting pageviews to gauge Web site popularity, instead opting for a system where it would measure how long a user stays on a site.

AJAX and other dynamic page generation techniques have rendered the page view a outdated metric and video also carries the same effect.

Nielsen/NetRatings will begin reporting total sessions and total time spent on a site in order to figure out site popularity.

Using this method will shake up Web rankings quite a bit. For example, under the old system, AOL was sixth in pageviews. However, using the new system, it is number one with 25 billion minutes spent on its pages in May. The opposite happens to Google which drops to fifth from third using the new method.

Other Web ratings firms also have addressed the problems new technologies pose to metrics with their own systems. comScore now defines its visits as the number of times a person returns to a site with at least a half-hour break between page loads.