FAQs: Measure

What reporting is available for download?

You can download audience data for any of your properties or audience segments in CSV format. This includes all report information you see when you sign into Quantcast, including traffic, traffic frequency, demographics, geographies, lifestyle, and business. To start, sign into Quantcast and click the Download button to select the data you want to use.

Why is my Quantcast Measure data different from what panel-centric syndicated services report?

Quantcast provides Quantified sites with audience data based on directly measured census-level traffic. As a result, Quantcast audience data should align with a site’s internal reporting. Syndicated services typically report data based on panels, projecting a publisher’s total traffic off of a small subset of their actual traffic.

The syndicated services may also be reporting different aggregations of domains, subdomains, or even specific pages. As a result, traffic assignments may not line up between services. In such an environment, the resulting data is not an exact apples-to-apples comparison.

Another possible difference – Quantcast audience data is based on visits, which may not be the case for other services that report traffic on basic audience composition.

Why don’t the numbers Quantcast provides for my site align with my internal statistics when my site is not Quantified?

If your site is not Quantified, then we’re only able to present estimates for your audience. These estimates are only as accurate as traditional panel-based measurement services, as we are relying solely on third-party data. Quantcast’s system is collaborative and sites can participate in our continuing effort to offer the most accurate data available by getting Quantified, free of charge. Quantcast Measure incorporates your real site traffic into the audience calculations, thus offering the highest degree of accuracy.

Why isn’t my data matching up with my internal analytics even though I have Quantified my site?

When properly implemented, Quantcast data will line up closely with most web analytics packages—However, several common problems account for the vast majority of issues with data alignment:

• Your tag is not placed on every page of your site. For us to accurately measure your site, it is essential that the tag be placed on all pages — consider placing it in a common footer file.

• If you are recently Quantified (less than 300 days worth of data), Quantcast attempts to project our metrics based on the data that we have seen. For instance, if you Quantified your site on a day with very low traffic, our 30-day projection will likely appear lower than your actual site traffic. These numbers will converge on your true traffic as we gather more data. An easy way to make sure we are seeing all of your traffic is to log into your Quantcast account, open your profile, and visit the Traffic tab. Click ‘Download traffic stats’ and ensure that the daily page views align fairly closely with your internal analytics.

• Your tag has been removed or malformed since you quantified. Oftentimes our tag is accidentally removed, or altered in a way that interferes with its correct operation, by accident. If you’re experiencing a sudden change in traffic, please ensure that the tag on your site is exactly as it appears in the ‘Network & Setting’ tab of your account, and ensure that it remains on all of the pages of your site.

• You may also be using server log data that counts unique IP addresses. This methodology tends to overstate the number of people visiting a site, as the same Internet user’s IP can change frequently for a large variety of reasons. Quantcast will also not count bots or spiders visiting your website, whereas the IP-based methodology will.

• Terminology varies slightly between different analytics packages. Typically, Pageviews are counted fairly evenly across different analytics platforms (although they may appear higher when spider and crawler pageviews are being counted), so that is usually the best metric to use when comparing results. If there is a large difference between the pageviews Quantcast is reporting and the pageviews your analytics package is reporting, it’s most likely indicative of a faulty implementation.

I deleted a previously Quantified site. Can I resubmit my site?

Yes. Sign into Quantcast and follow the instructions to Quantify your site. Be sure your Quantcast tag is placed on all pages of the site.

How does Quantcast treat subdomains?

Quantcast will provide separate profiles on each of a site’s subdomains as long as the Quantcast tag is present. There is no need to add each subdomain separately from the domain, as Quantcast will automatically generate them under the ‘Subdomains’ section of your profile.

What is the date range for the traffic numbers on your site?

For Quantified sites, traffic numbers are updated daily and work on a rolling 30-day basis (traffic statistics shown are from the previous 30 days). For non-Quantified sites, data is updated monthly.

How do you obtain your demographic information?

Quantcast uses an inference model to characterize audiences of nearly any size. Quantcast has NOT built its model on directly identifiable information but instead uses a large-scale mathematical model to infer the demographics of visitors.

The inference approach is built on a foundation of direct measurement, using numerous data inputs that provide insight into demographic benchmarks. These benchmarks are the foundation for rich audience segments used across millions of digital media assets.

Can Quantcast measure Ajax activity?

Yes. Our tag ultimately measures the number of times a browser loads Ajax, whether the load was triggered by a user or an Ajax call. In our reports, this is represented as “impressions” or “events.”

For sites that use Ajax heavily, this number must be interpreted with care: It can understate user engagement if the site updates much of its content through Ajax without reloading our tag, or it can overstate engagement if the site reloads our tag when the user session is inactive.

How do I exclude bots and spiders from my traffic metrics?

Quantcast automatically excludes robots and spiders from your traffic count as long as they identify themselves in the User-Agent request header. Traffic generated by Googlebot, monitoring services such as Gomez, and others known to the IAB’s Bot and Spider List will also be excluded from your traffic counts. If you’re using an automated, homegrown means of generating traffic to your site, you should make sure it identifies itself by putting “robot” in the User-Agent.

How can I exclude my internal traffic from my traffic counts?

Internal traffic (visits from you or other employees/contributors to your own site) is a tiny part of a typical site’s audience—our studies have estimated internal traffic at less than 1% of the total. Suppose you’re generating an unusual amount of internal traffic. In that case, we recommend adding server logic to your pages to exclude our measurement tag on requests from your own IP address.

What control do I have over my data’s visibility to the public?

As a Quantified site, you have complete control over which data is public and which is kept private. Data visibility can be configured on the Properties page. Select the gear icon and toggle off the Public Profile option.

Data access is on a site-by-site basis. Please note that access can only be granted to individuals with a registered Quantcast account, which is available for free at www.quantcast.com/user/signup.

Will I be able to deactivate an account after it’s been created?

Remove the Quantcast Measure pixels from your website to discontinue participation in the measurement program.