We access the CarQuake site on Monday morning and are astonished to find out that we had a really busy end to November. Sunday’s traffic was the best single day of traffic in November…

Given all the tools at our disposal, we look at our analytics – traffic is up, particularly direct visits and on searches for ‘CarQuake’ in the search engines. So, what does that mean?

Another look and we see that direct links from TimesOnline.co.uk have increased tenfold. So we go there, do a search and find this article: ‘A Brand New Car, I’ll Take Two Please‘… and there we are… The best offer for a SAAB in the UK. Then, we find out that the same article was published in the Sunday Times. Unfortunately, we are unable to correct that CarQuake also has the cheapest new land rover discovery prices in the UK… and that CarQuake is not a ‘broker’ – it puts buyers directly in touch with supplying dealers! Still, publicity is good.

In terms of the stats, here’s the interesting bit – the traffic on the day from Sunday Times online was about 15% of that estimated from the printed newspaper (direct searches and traffic). However on Monday, the online version was more like 40% of the traffic estimated from the newspaper and we expect that by the end of the week, the online version will have overtaken the print and will for the foreseeable future.

It pays to be as smart with the way you measure media as with how much you spend, and episodes like this really help us evaluate both!