Web Analytics – Looking in the Mirror – Illusions and Maya

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In a blog post by Michael Brewer of VitalOne Health, a researcher in the health insurance
market, he mentions that ComScore claims that there is a large increase in online searches for Health Insurance.

I’d like to pause for a minute on this topic and reflect on something that was brought to my attention recently, purely opinion of course, some would say backed by sound logic and experience with health insurance online market data. The industry is looking in a mirror, and creating numbers out of that vanity and constant concern about their online presence.

Imagine the amount of people working in Health Insurance every day…sitting at their computers searching for theirs and their competitors websites. Constant queries flying across the internet to see what the next biggest player is doing in order to keep up with the technology.

As technology improves, as web design becomes more creative and standardized, so does the need to keep up with the rest of the web. Companies are learning that to lag behind in online presence is detrimental to their business, but this creates this illusory effect of a growing industry. Its not that the American people are more interested in shopping for Health Insurance online, but American business is more interested in selling Health Insurance online.

Mind you, the market is still great, and very very promising to health insurance companies, both established and new alike. Just don’t let these numbers fool you into delusions of grandeur. Non-specific analytics data from an ambiguous web where nothing can be truly tracked with any sort of concrete accuracy is the Maya of technology. The grand illusion that veils the truth and keeps us living in a world that is indeed not as it seems, no matter how hard we believe it to be so.

If you must, take a percentage of that chunk of traffic and consider it the real value of all those searches. What’s the magic number (%)? It’s …