ISP Account Log File Analytics

O'Reilly Radar has a post today about the acquisition of Hitwise by Experian.

Hitwise, the company that performs analysis of log files from 25 million worldwide ISP accounts to provide relative market share graphs for web properties, has been acquired by Experian for $240 million.

For those who don't want to be "pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered", just hope that your ISP is not participating (or, find a good secure proxy, as it sounds like managing your cookies and IP address may not be enough). Of course, it's a little hard to tell what qualifies as an ISP these days (cable? mobile?)





Update: The Hitwise How We Do It page gives an overview of the "network-centric" part of the methodology:

Hitwise has developed proprietary software that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use to analyze website usage logs created on their network. The anonymous data sent to Hitwise from the ISPs include a range of industry standard metrics relating to the viewing of websites including page requests, visits and average visit length.

Hitwise also combines this rich ISP data with a worldwide opt-in panel to overlay demographic, lifestyle and transactional behavior across the thousands of websites that are reported on every day.

Because of the extensive sample size of network data, Hitwise can also provide detailed insights into the search terms used to find thousands of sites as well as a range of clickstream reports, analyzing the movements of visitors between sites...

...Hitwise only extracts aggregate information from ISP networks and no personal information is seen or captured by Hitwise in accordance with local and international privacy guidelines. Hitwise's methodology is audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers on an annual basis.

Reads a lot like most privacy policies. Maybe it's OK, but there's an awful lot of wiggle room. The clickstream and search term references are the most bothersome (didn't we learn anything from the AOL fiasco?), particularly if tied to some localized demographics.

Related Post:
ISPs Selling Clickstreams