Ben Edelman sent me an email yesterday about my post on his report regarding how popups inflate site statistics. I recently upgraded to WordPress 2.1.3 and apparently this theme does not support comments (thanks Dave Dalka!) so I’m posting his well thought out response below:

Pete — Thanks for the link. I certainly don’t claim to be the first to report that popups inflate traffic. (Nor is this even my first article on the subject; I wrote about it last year too, particularly vis-a-vis effects on CPM banner ads.) That said, I do think my piece offers some contributions. In particular:

1) Reporting specific companies using forced-visit traffic to inflate their stats. Naming names helps create accountability. Let the media buyers answer to their bosses and their bosses’ bosses, not to mention investors and the court of public opinion.

2) Showing examples to document the user experience. I show exactly how these popups appear and what a bad user experience results. Consider e.g. the unlabeled popups and the super-focus popups that even users’ Start buttons.

3) Examining the connection between popup/forced-visit traffic and spyware-originating traffic. So buying popup traffic has an additional harm to the computing ecosystem, namely supporting spyware vendors and their unsavory tactics (e.g. installing without consent).

4) Creating an authoritative citation — a page that can be linked to. This helps get others up to speed about the problems arising out of forced visits.

Edelman has contributed a great deal to the Web community and brought many valuable issues to the fore - he’s been on my radar for quite a while and I certainly hope he continues on the same path.

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