I didn’t say it, I’m just repeating it, so don’t kill the messenger. Earlier today, Avinash Kaushik from Google stated that Hits (aka pageviews or clicks) should stand for “How Idiots Track Success” in an interview at MediaPost. Over on Avinash’s blog he frequently talks about KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that should be used to measure the performance of campaigns. Well today he explained what not to use as a success metric, and he is spot on.

While many marketers, website owners, and other business owners already know this, you’d be surprised how many of them use tools that rely on this overused and inaccurate metric. Many analytics, and even recommendation vendors, are relying on clicks as a KPI to either display to their customers or in the case of recommendations, to power their algorithms. The quality of recommendations or any kind of targeting based on user observation is no stronger than its ability to understand when and how a user has succeeded. Bounce rate, as Avinash points out, is just one of those metrics. At Baynote we track dozens of them, and clicks are by far the least utilized when validating success or failure.

Bottom line: When you are talking to analytics vendors, ad networks, or recommendations vendors ask them what KPIs their algorithms are relying on. If they say hits or clicks, they are idiots by Avinash’s definition, and he’s a smart guy.