---
title: "Compete Introduces Attention Statistics"
date: 2007-04-03
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2007"
    url: "/tag/2007.md"
---

# Compete Introduces Attention Statistics

![](https://web.archive.org/web/20110519124709im_/http://rww.readwriteweb.netdna-cdn.com/images/compete_logo.gif)In an attempt to go beyond page views and visits, today web stats company [Compete](https://web.archive.org/web/20110519124709/http://www.compete.com/) introduced “Attention metrics”. The reason is that interactive Web page technologies such as Ajax and Flash – not to mention online video – are making simple page views and visits increasingly outdated. With Ajax for example, information on a webpage can be updated without needing to refresh the page. In order to get around these issues, Compete has introduced two specific attention metrics:

- **Attention:** The total time spent on a site as a percentage of the total time spent online by all U.S. internet users
- **Velocity:** The relative change in daily Attention; velocity is used to determine the relative growth of a website compared to other sites

The move is aimed at marketing people, to help them find “high-potential advertising sites”.

To test this out, let’s look at 3 popular websites – eBay, YouTube and MySpace. Here are their attention graphs on Compete:

Interesting that all 3 sites have an almost identical traffic pattern (in terms of peaks especially). Meanwhile MySpace has an attention metric of 13.073374%. YouTube has just over 1%, while eBay has just over 3% (of total time spent online by all U.S. internet users).

I also tested out a number of blogs, but most of them didn’t have enough data to compute (including r/ww). Also there was an instance of incorrect data in Compete, relating to one of the few tech blogs that *does* have attention data. I’ve said it before, but Compete really needs to improve its data for blogs – because obviously popular blogs are key niche sites that marketers are interested in. Also as a publisher I would like to be able to measure ‘attention’ for R/WW, so I hope Compete can provide these metrics for blogs and small sites soon.

*Disclosure: Compete is a current Read/WriteWeb sponsor.*

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/compete_attention_metrics.php))*