A huge part of social media measurement involves studying the Web analytics of your blog (or your company’s blog). There are numerous free and subscription-based services available that will tell you all kinds of things from how your traffic compares to the competition to what search terms people are using to find your blog. Compete.com is one such analytics service.

I think my issues with faulty metrics are fairly well documented. I know to take all data from these types of sites with a grain of salt. After all, samples can lead to educated guesses at best; terribly inaccurate data at worst. And I’ll give Compete some credit for getting at least some information (close to) correct about some of my sites — generally their unique visitor estimates aren’t too far off for me.

I take issue with other data the company is providing though — data that I consider to be a violation of my privacy, and data you might be unknowingly sharing as well. This post is about sharing something I recently discovered occurring on Compete.com, as well as my opinions on the ethics and defenses of it.

Unusual Referrals and What They Told Me

Periodically I run simple site comparisons through Compete’s free tool to see general trends — usually my primary blog and competitors / colleagues in the niche. It’s a good way to see if overall the niche is seeing increases in readership or how my blog is faring compared to others. And that’s fine. [click to continue…]

compete, privacy, referrals, statistics

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