SAN MATEO, Calif., — June 23, 2004 — Keynote Systems (Nasdaq “KEYN”), The Internet Performance Authority®, broadened its index coverage today with the announcement of the world’s first news media Web transaction index. Named “The Keynote News Media Web Transaction Performance Index,” it measures the transaction speed and reliability of 19 leading news media Web sites.
As people increasingly turn to online news sites for breaking news and information, Keynote’s new index will be a valuable resource for both the news media and consumers. The news media industry can use the index as a reliable way to compare themselves to competitors and to improve their own online performance, while consumers can use the index as a way to decide which sites deliver news the most efficiently.
In its inaugural week, Keynote’s News Media Index showed a wide range of variation in the speed and reliability of the sites measured. The index measures the complete end-to-end process of going to a news site, selecting a particular news-related category, searching for and selecting an article.
The overall average speed for completing this transaction was 8.14 seconds. While the top site for performance, CBSNews.com, delivered the entire experience in less than 5.0 seconds, the slowest site, ChicagoTribune.com, averaged over 14.0 seconds. During the week, a few sites took as long as 25.8 seconds, but most measurements fell between 4.0 and 18.0 seconds.
The transaction reliability of the measured sites also varied greatly. While the index average for reliability was a not so terrific 97.12%, the difference between the most reliable and least reliable sites was a significant 6.4% (99.91% for CNN.com vs. 93.51% for WashingtonPost.com). Reliability measurements also showed a greater degree of variation by site and by time. This somewhat erratic behavior indicates that the time of day is likely to have a significant impact on a user’s chance of enjoying a smooth and successful completion of their desired task.
“While the timeliness of news sites continue to improve every year, some sites now deliver consistently reliable and high levels of performance, while others are still struggling to reconcile the conflicting demands of timeliness and responsiveness,” said Roopak Patel, senior Internet analyst in Keynote’s public services division. “Given the competitive nature of news sites, there is little to keep the allegiance of users. If someone is looking for a particular news item, switching to another site is a natural response when their first choice takes too long to download.”
Recent research suggests that millions of Americans receiving their news online are affected by variable site performance. In June 2004, Harris Interactive found that fully 80% of U.S. adults now use the Internet to obtain news online. The same study found that 50% of Americans turn to the Web sites of leading newspapers for news, while 37% turn to the Web sites run by television networks. Finally, underscoring the dramatic reliance by executives on news-oriented Web sites, the results of a similar survey conducted by Harris Interactive for The Wall Street Journal and released in May 2004 found that 84% of executives read news online “often” or “sometimes.” Fully 25% of executives said Internet news sites are now their most important sources for news, only 4% below their ranking of national newspapers at 29%.
The Keynote News Media Web Transaction Performance Index is the first of its kind to systematically measure the speed and reliability of leading news media Web sites for performing common multi-step tasks. To measure this particular index, Keynote’s measurement computers in 10 cities around the U.S. “click through” the same steps an actual person might perform: entering the particular URL of the news site they wish to visit, clicking on a specific news sub-topic (such as local news, world news or politics), logging in using account information where necessary and selecting on a particular news item.
The 19 Web sites that comprise the News Media Web Transaction Index include the following: abcnews.com (NYSE “DIS”), bbc.com, boston.com (NYSE “NYT”), cbsnews.com (NYSE “VIA”), chicagotribune.com (NYSE “TRB”), cnbc.com, cnn.com (NYSE”TWX”), csmonitor.com, foxnews.com (NYSE “NWS”), nbc.com (NYSE “GE”), latimes.com (NYSE “TRB”), mercurynews.com (NYSE “KRI”), msnbc.com, nytimes.com (NYSE “NYT”), sfgate.com, sky.com (NZSX “SKY”), usatoday.com (NYSE “GCI”), washingtonpost.com (NYSE “WPO”), wsj.com (NYSE “DJ”).
The Keynote News Media Web Transaction Performance Index will be published weekly on Keynote’s Web site at http://www.keynote.com/solutions/performance_indices/news_media/news_media.html
Keynote has historically seen an improvement in overall performance results, over time, whenever it has launched a new vertical-based Web transaction performance index; in this case the online news media industry. The goal of the index is to help the news media industry measure and manage the performance of its Web sites and optimize the experience of people seeking news online.
The Keynote News Media Transaction Performance Index is designed to reflect the speed and reliability of the most well known news media Web sites with a large online presence. Going beyond home page performance, the news media transaction index provides deep insight into the performance of these high traffic news media Web sites.
Here is the summary data for the first week’s worth of results from Keynote’s News Media Web Transaction Performance Index—
About Keynote’s News Media Web Transaction
Performance Index
Keynote pioneered the use of vertical
indices and benchmarks for Web application performance over five
years ago. The data used to produce the index for a given week is
taken from actual online transactions Keynote’s automated
measurement computers execute and measure from 10 U.S. cities
(Boston, San Francisco, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New
York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston and Dallas) on an hourly basis
Monday to Sunday from 8:00 a.m. to midnight (eastern time).
Keynote transaction measurement computers are placed on the most widely used, familiar and recognizable Internet backbone and service providers in these cities including Uunet/Worldcom, Sprint, AT&T and Qwest. Additionally, Keynote’s global network of measurement computers run standard Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers on Windows/2000 to obtain the most accurate and representative transaction performance data possible today.
For the Keynote News Media Web Transaction Performance Index, each of the measurements begin by launching the browser, selecting the starting URL for the specific Web site, and then conducting the following:
Clicking on a specific news sub-topic (such as local news, world news or politics)
Logging in using account information where necessary
Selecting on the first news item returned
Complete index data that includes not only the aggregated and limited time-frame results as published here, but every data point taken 24/7 along with page, network component, content and error detail, is available from Keynote on a subscription basis for $3,885.00 per month. An aggregate view of the data is available for $895.00 per month.
Background on Keynote’s Web Performance
Indices
Keynote’s Web transaction indices leverage
Keynote’s long history and experience developing Internet
performance indices. Keynote launched the world’s first Web
performance indices that assess page download performance (as
opposed to transaction performance), known as The Keynote Business
40 Internet Performance Index (measurements over T1 and T3
connections) and The Keynote Consumer 40 Internet Performance Index
(measurements over dial-up and broadband connections). Keynote also
launched the world’s first transaction performance index, The
Keynote Web Broker Trading Index. All today are considered the ‘gold
standard’ for Web performance benchmarking.
In addition to The Keynote News Media Web Transaction Performance Index, Keynote’s growing line of transaction indices include: The Keynote Web Broker Trading Index, The Keynote E-Banking Transaction Performance Index, The Keynote E-Commerce Transaction Performance Index, The Keynote Travel & Hospitality Web Transaction Performance Index (includes leading airline, hotel and online travel agency Web sites) and The Keynote E-Government Transaction Performance Index.
Customers can use Keynote’s growing line of industry-specific Web transaction indices to assess Web transaction performance against internal benchmarks and against competitors. Customers can then leverage Keynote’s additional monitoring, performance management, load, content and usability testing services to improve the overall performance of their e-business applications and infrastructure.
To build and maintain its growing line of Web performance indices, Keynote uses its unparalleled global infrastructure of over 1,600 strategically and statistically located measurement, testing and diagnostic computers representing Internet performance from 50 metropolitan areas worldwide.
Detailed information regarding the methodology behind Keynote’s Web performance indices can be found at: http://www.keynote.com/downloads/whitepapers/webtxn-methodology052704.pdf.
General information about Keynote’s performance indices can be found at http://www.keynote.com/solutions/solutions_ps_index.html
About Keynote
Founded in 1995,
Keynote Systems (Nasdaq “KEYN”), The Internet Performance
Authority®, is the worldwide leader in Web performance measurement
and management services that improve the quality of e-business.
Keynote’s services enable corporate enterprises to monitor,
benchmark, test, diagnose and optimize their e-business systems both
inside and outside the firewall. Over 2,100 corporate IT departments
and 19,000 individual subscribers rely on the company's easy-to-use
and cost-effective services to increase revenues and reduce downtime
costs, without requiring additional complex and costly software
implementations.
Keynote is The Internet Performance Authority due to the company’s global infrastructure of over 1,600 measurement computers in more than 50 cities worldwide that capture and store on a daily basis over 40 million Internet performance measurements, frequent media citations quoting Keynote's Web performance data and analysis and the company’s growing range of market-leading Web performance indices for vertical markets (http://www.keynote.com/solutions/solutions_ps_index.html).
Keynote Systems, Inc. is headquartered in San Mateo, California and can be reached at http://www.keynote.com/ or by phone in the U.S. at 650-403-2400.
Keynote, The Internet Performance Authority and Perspective are registered trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2004 Keynote Systems, Inc.
Public Relations Contacts:
Dan Berkowitz,
Keynote Systems, Inc., (650) 403-3305, dberkowitz@keynote.com
Della Lowe, Keynote Systems, Inc., (650)
403-3233, dlowe@keynote.com