Truth in the Numbers

Posted by Shawn Friesen on Jun 12, 2012

It’s come to my attention that a competitor is publishing traffic data comparing their site to RVT.com. The report is claiming to use data from a ‘reliable’ source, Comscore, which uses a group of users to measure overall traffic trends on the internet. While this data may have its place in determining traffic volume among competing websites, in the case of the reported RVT.com data, the margin for error is up to 453%! Below is the breakdown, with “TRUTH” data taken from Google Analytics, which directly measures the traffic on RVT.com.  Also, up-to-date traffic information may be viewed here at anytime.

Competitor claim #1:
2011 – RVT.com avg monthly traffic – 117,636

TRUTH:
486,904 RVT.com
+ 7,605 iPad and IPhone App traffic
+ 21,860 RVTowables.com
+ 17,137 RVMotorized.com
= 533,506
453% error

Competitor claim #2:
Total Pages Viewed RVT.com – 27,000,000

TRUTH:
36,585,837 RVT.com
+ 821,289 iPad and iPhone Apps
+ 1,653,239 RVTowables.com
+ 1,600,063 RVMotorized.com
= 40,660,428
150% error

Competitor claim #3:
Total Unique Visits on RVT.com – 1,036,000

TRUTH:
3,168,323 RVT.com
+ 14,613 iPad and iPhone Apps
+199,287 RVTowables.com
+135,041 RVMotorized.com
= 3,517,264
339% error