An Ajax-powered tool
on Yahoo

MySpace's toppling of Yahoo in terms of pageviews may merely be a sign of Yahoo's embrace of the efficient, Web 2.0-associated AJAX technology, which MySpace does not use.

The switch lets Yahoo users to refresh only select portions of the page when needed. Yet, along with those efficiency gains comes the headache of determining what counts as a pageview impression, which web designers argue reduces the efficiency of analytics software, reports BetaNews (via Micro Persuasion).

In May, former ClickZ Managing Editor Pamela Parker, now with Federated Media, concluded that perhaps analytics needed to catch up to the new technology. "Things are getting more complex every day, and it's time to start asking about more than just pageviews, about more than just impressions."

"This is a dirty little secret in the advertising business that no one wants to talk about," Micro Persuasion's Steve Rubel wrote recently. "Media companies love to promote how many page views their properties get. They've used the data to build equity. They will fight it tooth and nail to protect it, perhaps by not embracing interactive technologies as quickly as they should. But that's not going to stop the revolution from coming."