ComScore Inflates Numbers: A Bogus Blog Report

The Social Software Weblog posted a bit about comScore's "Behaviors of the Blogosphere". Halfway through the report, I was shocked. Ranking high in a graph titled "Top Blogs Ranked by Visits", I found sites such as Drudge Report, Fark, and Slashdot. First I thought, "these sites aren't blogs, what are they doing in this report?" That's when I realized that these three sites were some of the top ranked sites in the study. Sounds like comScore is inflating numbers to me.

I decided to check into things. I went to comScore's website to contact them. Their webform required a lot of information, but I filled it all out and started to compose my question. I finished, hit submit, and nothing happened. Their webform was not compatible with Firefox - bad javascript checking for those required fields. Smooth move there comScore.

So I flipped over to IE and submitted the following:

Please note, your contact form requires far to much information. I found it to be intrusive.

Also, your form is broken. Your broken Javascript prevents the form from being functional in Firefox.

On to the reason I'm contacting you. I recently read your report on blog use posted here:

http://www.comscore.com/blogreport/comScoreBlogReport.pdf

After reviewing the report, I have a question of significant importance to ask.

Why did you include sitse such as drudgereport, slashdot, and fark in your report? These are not blogs. These aren't even close to being blogs. On page six of your report, 3 of 5 "Top Blogs Ranked by Visits" are NOT blogs. And, 3 of 6 "Top Blogs Ranked by Unique Visitors" ARE NOT BLOGS.

DrudgeReport is a news site, like so many others on the Internet. It's a collection of links to interesting news. You don't see dated posts with personal commentary of any kind. There's nothing blog like about it - at all.

Both Fark and Slashdot are online communities where the posts are gathered by a group of people. Blogs are not run by committee.

Does your organization know what a blog is? If it does, why did it still include these sites in your report? Was it to influence your statistics and inflate your numbers?

I eagerly await your reply.

Thanks for your time,
Scott

I hit submit and got a new error message. Their webform only allows for submissions less than 500 characters!?! *groan* ... So I cut my message down to this:

Why did you include sitse such as drudgereport, slashdot, and fark in your blog report? These sites are not blogs, not even close. Three out of five of your "Top Blogs Ranked by Visits" are NOT blogs. Does your organization know what a blog is? If it does, why did it still include these sites in the report? Was it to inflate your numbers?

If I get a reply, I'll post it here.