Is the Web Analytics Association doing anything? I am not being sarcastic, I really do not know. What I do know is that when you install any Web analytics program, each one will report different numbers. Today, I installed an open source analytics program named AW Stats just to test this. AW Stats reported about three times the level of daily visitors then Urchin 5.7. Even Urchin 5.7 compared to Urchin 3.0 reported widely different visitor counts. We need standardization.
In the mean time, if you are a publisher and you want to inflate your visitor counts, simply demo all the analytics programs and see which one produces the highest visitor count. Then tell your potential advertiser that figure. I hear Bryan Eisenberg, one of the founders of the Web Analytics Association, will be on Webmaster Radio: Wizards of Web today at 12:00 EST. Well that was an hour and 45 minutes ago, so maybe I missed it. Would have been a good question to ask.
