• Puget Sound Business Journal, Thursday, April 23, 2009 9:33 AM

Official tallies of online traffic to Seattlepi.com in its first month as an online-only news source have sparked criticism of Nielsen and the accuracy of its information. Nielsen Online says web traffic dropped 23% at Seattlepi in March, while a rival Web site run by The Seattle Times had a 70% jump in traffic, compared to March 2008.

Hearst-owned Seattlepi.com (formerly the Seattle Post-Intelligencer) says the Nielsen numbers are flawed and that internal company data from the Omniture tracking service show that Seattlepi.com traffic jumped nearly 10% compared to March 2008. A Hearst rep calls the Nielsen measure a "statistical guesstimate," that is flawed because it is extrapolated from a panel of 180,000 people.

Showing that this isn't just a matter of sour grapes, the Times also takes issue with the Nielsen numbers. Kathy Best, Times's managing editor for digital news, says Seattle Times ' internal data show its unique visitors were about 5.3 million in March, up 33% from March 2008, not 70% as Nielsen states.

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