Wednesday, June 17, 1998

A Web Version of Nielsen Ratings Ranks MIT's Site as No. 1 Among Universities By GOLDIE BLUMENSTYK The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was on-line academe's equivalent of NBC in May: More people viewed its World-Wide Web pages than those of any other university. As estimated 1.9 million people clicked on an M.I.T. page last month, according to a recent ranking that estimates the number of "unique visitors" to Web pages based on a statistical sampling. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Michigan tied for second place, with 1.8 million visitors each, followed by the University of Washington and the University of Texas at Austin with 1.3 million each, and by Harvard University with 1.1 million. Carnegie Mellon University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill each had one million visitors. The rankings are compiled by RelevantKnowledge, a company that uses sampling techniques to estimate Web usage. RelevantKnowledge's methods are similar to the techniques used by Nielsen Media Research, which compiles television ratings based on the viewing habits of its "Nielsen families." Nielsen is expected to start its own Web rating service this summer. RelevantKnowledge bases its estimates on the Internet activity of 6,100 panelists, all of them age 12 or older, who are selected to reflect diversity in age, sex, income, education, and locale. The company tracks which sites its panelists visit, weights each panelists' choices according to a statistical model, and then calculates the rankings to reflect the Internet habits of an estimated 57 million Web users. Panelists receive a modest stipend -- $25 every six months -- for their participation. Company officials say the measurement technique is more sophisticated than simply counting the number of times a user retrieves a file from a site because the company's analysis gives its clients more information about the kinds of people that sites are attracting. Advertisers, corporate analysts, and producers of commercial Web sites are among the company's clients. Some large commercial Web sites have questioned the accuracy of such methodology. But RelevantKnowledge says its technique is accurate, in part because it avoids the problem of how to treat the extra "hits" that sometimes occur in the process of connecting to a Web site. The company, based in Atlanta, began its ranking service in September. Traffic on university Web sites is much lower than that of the most popular commercial sites. The No. 1 site over all was that of the search service Yahoo!, which had an estimated 30.5 million users in May, according to RelevantKnowledge. But college and university sites attract a surprisingly large number of visitors. Allen Goldberg, RelevantKnowledge's vice-president for business development, said many of the university sites attracted outsiders because they offer services unrelated to the institution, like the weather and geography sites at M.I.T. Jim Denison, the company's vice-president for panel research, said that rankings of college Web sites could also be affected by seasonal events. Sites might attract additional traffic in the early fall, for example, when high-school students and their parents are seeking information about admissions. And traffic "could be influenced by sports," he said -- for example, if a university's basketball team starts to do well. Following are RelevantKnowledge's rankings of the top 25 ".edu" Web sites for the month of May: 1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1.9 million 2. U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1.8 million 2. U. of Michigan 1.8 million 4. U. of Washington 1.3 million 4. U. of Texas at Austin 1.3 million 6. Harvard U. 1.1 million 7. Carnegie Mellon U. 1.0 million 7. U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1.0 million 7. Stanford U. 1.0 million 10. Michigan State U. 982,000 11. Columbia U. 966,000 11. U. of Virginia 966,000 13. Indiana U. at Bloomington 907,000 14. U. of California at Berkeley 887,000 15. Pennsylvania State U. 867,000 16. U. of Pennsylvania 857,000 17. Ohio State U. 855,000 18. U. of Wisconsin at Madison 848,000 19. Cornell U. 832,000 20. U. of Southern California 724,000 21. Texas A&M U. 715,000 22. Washington U. (Mo.) 712,000 23. U. of Colorado at Boulder 702,000 24. Purdue U. 685,000 25. U. of Maryland 683,000