CBSNews.com Has Fun With Percentages

I fell for it last week, and I wasn’t the only one. “Couric generally directs viewers to the Web site CBSNews.com at least twice a broadcast, and that site saw a 57 percent increase in traffic for her first week compared to the week before,” this AP story says.

But what does a 57 percent increase in traffic actually mean? Maybe not a whole heck of a lot, when the traffic is relatively low to begin with. CBSNews.com averaged 2.2 million visitors the week of Sept. 3, and 3.2 million visitors the week of Sept. 10. The numbers are definitely up, but the percentages conveniently hide the fact that the traffic averages are tiny compared to MSNBC.com, which averaged 12.2 million visitors the week of Sept. 3, and 12.7 million visitors the week of Sept. 10.

ABCNews.com beat CBS, too, but by a much smaller margin; it averaged 3.7 million viewers the week of Sept. 10. Data courtesy of Nielsen//Net-Ratings…