The China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC) and a group of web companies recently proposed that web sites use unified standards to more accurately gauge their traffic.

Mao Wei, director of the CINIC, explained that such a system would remove the guesswork from the current web site auditing and boost the development of net advertising and e-commerce.

He said that web site traffic totals are not accurate now because different web sites use different measurement criterion. Some use figures based on amounts of hits on the sites, while others determine volume totals through numbers of user sessions.

CINIC has formulated a set of new statistics terms and evaluation standards, and is cooperating with Asiainfo Technologies (China), Inc, to set up a third-party auditing system.

Since 1994, when China linked with the Internet, the country has seen breakneck development in its web economy. By the end of this June, China had four million people with Internet access and had set up nearly 10,000 web sites. (Xinhua)