Quantcast is a Viable Alternative to Alexa

In a Long Tail world the way we measure the health of a Web site is broken. For starters, thousands of sites that are powered by Ajax are being undercounted, according to BusinessWeek. Second, comScore, Nielsen and Hitwise have done nothing to reach out to the little guy to give us the tools we need to participate in their auditing process. Finally, while Alexa provides interesting data and eye candy, it's not really very accurate. It measures only a small subset of more tech-savvy users.

Now there's a new entry in this horse race - Quantcast, which calls itself an "open Internet ratings service." Quantcast is run by a team of web analytics experts that want to create a clearinghouse of data for advertisers. Even better, they have a free Quantified Publisher Program that anyone can sign up for.

For each site, Quantcast creates an index indicator that states how that site stacks up against the broader US internet population. The tool works best for sites that have signed up for the Quantified Publisher Program, so data on blogs and smaller sites right now is sparse. However, for mainstream sites (be they 1.0 or 2.0), the data is very rich. For example...

* Data on digg shows that its audience is 69% male

* Most YouTube visitors are passers by as opposed to addicts

* Facebook visitors, on the other hand are addicts

Quantcast has a lot going for it and, unlike others, is poised to capitalize on the network effect if we all sign up for it. Give it a go.