The Internet continues to be measured twice

January data from the NetRatings and MMXI Internet panelsAccording to MMXI, 2.595 million people surfed the Internet from home for an average of 308 minutes in January, visiting 294 sites. According to the data from NetRatings, on the other hand, 2.059 million people surfed for 381 minutes each on their home computer and visited 541 sites. What is striking is that while the monthly surfing time previously differed by a maximum of around half an hour, this time it differs by a whole 73 minutes. This sudden and massive outlier cannot be explained, at least on the basis of the other data, and shows once again how much the two panels must differ in their systems. So far, however, MMXI and AC Nielsen have made no serious attempt to clarify such differences together.
This is likely to remain the case for the time being. The two internet research companies NetRatings (operator of the Nielsen/NetRatings panel) and Jupiter Media Metrix (operator of the MMXI panel) have surprisingly canceled their planned merger. This is due to unofficial objections from the US regulatory authority, the Federal Trade Commission. It has not yet been decided whether NetRatings will also abandon its planned takeover of ACNielsen eRatings.
Conversely, it is also questionable how long Jupiter and NetRatings will be able to coexist: Both reported rather weak results for last year, and a patent lawsuit by Jupiter against NetRatings is still ongoing following the collapse of the merger.
Back to the data: Despite all the serious differences, the two panels at least converged in one detail in January. For the first time, both show the first two ranks identically: Microsoft.com takes the silver medal behind Bluewin.ch. There is also a similarity in 20th place: TVSpielfilm.de can be found in both tables, not for the first time, but for the first time in both panels. Blick.ch, on the other hand, dropped out of the top 20 in MMXI and fell back to 18th place in AC Nielsen. Markus Knöpfli
Top 20 domains january 2002

Nielsen/NetRatings MMXI
Rank Domain Number Reach Domain Visitors Reach
Visitors in % in 1000 in %
 1 bluewin.ch 995 268 48.33 bluewin.ch 1 400 53.8
 2 microsoft.com 715 357 34.73 microsoft.com 803 30.9
 3 msn.com 692 805 33.64 msn.ch 796 30.6
 4 passport.com 563 839 27.38 msn.com 774 29.7
 5 google.ch 507 539 24.64 passport.com 671 25.8
 6 search.ch 451 113 21.90 google.ch 664 25.5
 7 yahoo.com 417 400 20.27 yahoo.com 617 23.7
 8 msn.ch 401 687 19.50 search.ch 579 22.2
 9 sunrise.ch 376 117 18.26 sbb.ch 479 18.4
10 sbb.ch 308 324 14.97 sunrise.ch 461 17.7
11 yahoo.de 281 054 13.65 gmx.de 382 14.7
12 google.com 212 058 10.30 yahoo.de 362 13.9
13 gmx.net 199 726 9.70 google.com 347 13.3
14 yahoo.fr 194 010 9.42 msn.de 336 12.9
15 geocities.com 185 560 9.01 ubs.com 286 11.0
16 gmx.net 177 774 8.63 microsoft.de 264 10.1
17 netscape.com 169 763 8.24 yahoo.fr 234 9.0
18 blick.ch 166 131 8.07 microsoft.fr 208 8.0
19 yellownet.ch 146 683 7.12 real.com 204 7.8
20 tvspielfilm.de 140 498 6.82 tvspielfilm.de 201 7.7
Source: AC Nielsen/MMXI