Lies, damned lies and statistics

I've been going through some numbers for our sites - we have got a variety of different tools in use and it's very distracting to see how little overlap there is. As a reader there is a temptation to believe that the truth is out there somewhere and looking at a variety of tools will help to track it down. That isn't an enormous problem when the numbers are ours since we are relatively happy to deal with amibiguity - what was concerning me was how we could put this argument convincingly to our clients.

That was until I came across an article in Business Week, Web Numbers - What's Real?. What makes this article so interesting is that we aren't alone in our confusion. There isn't a single tool that delivers an accurate result for everyone and the picture is becoming increasingly confused as channels proliferate.

Now that sounds like a business idea that plenty of people would be prepared to support.