Incomplete stats are worse than no stats

In the rant about Gemius doing a favour for its friends I mentioned their IM rankings that only include messengers with site-centric measurements. This effectively excludes Skype which has been huge in Poland even before signing a distribution deal with Onet.pl, the most visited Polish portal site.

I've been told Gemius has been working hard for a long time now to include those apps that don't use site-centric measurements but until it can actually include them it doesn't see anything wrong with publishing the incomplete stats each month.

Gazeta Wyborcza has recently published an article about instant messengers in Poland which is a good example why bad stats are worse than no stats. Skype in Poland is becoming a phenomenon on par with Google (as I see it) but you won't find any mention of it in this article. Instead, you will learn that it's Gadu-Gadu and Tlen that reign in Poland. Why? Because the editor used the incomplete Gemius stats, of course.

(link to the article not provided as it will disappear in two weeks or so three months)