I’m checking out the new Google Trends feature where you can compare sites. I heard this was supposed to launch Tuesday so they jumped the gun. There’s great coverage in Search Engine Land and Mashable.
With the new feature, you can supposedly compare unique visitor estimates over time for various sites, making Google trends compete with Quantcast and Compete. Despite various screenshots posted, I can’t see the unique traffic numbers for any site I try.
A bigger surprise is that you can’t see any traffic estimates – even estimates! – for Google.com.
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Google’s numbers would be extraordinarily high, since they’re using information culled from traffic reports based on people who use the Google toolbar.
Of course, they have other sources as well, but they’re all Google owned. If someone has the Google toolbar, it’s likely that they use it, and thus it’s likely that they visit a Google property fairly regularly.
Therefore, it would stand to reason that measurements about Google taken from Google tracking would result in a near 100% traffic estimate for Google properties. which is obviously skewed.
so its probably for the best.
Another problem that I’ve heard with this is that its great for huge sites with lots of traffic, not so good for smaller sites, which stinks for the smaller guys.