Let’s have a fight about web metrics — Part 2

I was only joking this afternoon when I said it would be fun to have a fight over the nationals’ traffic figures.

But it seems they’re serious about it.

It turns out that the Guardian, News International and Associated Press are all suspicious about the rapid increase in traffic at Telegraph.co.uk, which this week culminated in the site becoming the UK’s most popular national newspaper site.

ABCe measured 18.6m uniques at Telegraph.co.uk during April.

But the site’s rivals had already raised concerns about ABCe’s March data with the Joint Industry Committee For Web Standards (Jicweb), the industry body that advises ABCe.

Brand Republic carries (reg. reqd.) a bland statement from Jicwebs that we can’t trace to the organization’s site — and which tells us very little about what’s at stake.

But there certainly seems to be a review of ABCe’s methodology in the works. Jicwebs is saying that this has been partly prompted by the rival publishers’ complaints.

Sheesh. We can file this one under: Life, art and imitation of the latter.