As you sip your morning coffee, you scan the headlines of the day, you write a couple emails on Yahoo! Mail, and then do a quick read on your stocks at Yahoo! Finance. 1 visit. After three back-to-back meetings, you remember that your significant other’s birthday is coming up, so you check out the Yahoo! Travel reviews for user recommendations on the most romantic hotel and book your last minute getaway. 2 visits. When you come back from lunch, you check to see if your friend has responded to your email about next week’s party. 3 visits. As you pack up to leave, you go to Yahoo! Local to look up that new sushi bar two cities away, and click Yahoo! Maps for directions to the restaurant. 4 visits.

Remember up-front that you (as Yahoo!) are measuring web “effectiveness” to maximise advertising revenue (banner-based or Adwords/Overture based). From that perspective, here’s why Daboll’s model is flawed. First, it isn’t applicable to anything other than diverse portals like Yahoo!, which aspire to be “one-stop shops” (I’m hearing that too often now - indications of a return to portal-ism?). Second, it doesn’t consider the many many different user interfaces to online information today that aren’t browser-based or even web-page-based. What about Yahoo’s own much-vaunted Widgets? What about the content access through Yahoo! Messenger? Through Yahoo! Desktop Search? Through Yahoo! Toolbar? Third, what about always-on customisable home pages such as the one Google offers? A user could access content all day long and never have to make more than one “visit”. Similarly, a Gmail inbox could be open all day too, with several dozen ads being served. That would count as one “visit” too.

Daboll’s got the right idea (we do need different metrics to measure effectiveness), but “visits” is simplifying it too much.

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