[cletus]

Yeah, sorry no sale, for two reasons:

1. Experian Hitwise samples data from reporting service providers. According to Wikipedia [1] that's 10 million users in the United States. We all know how problematic Internet sampling can be for browser market share and so on, even if it is a large sample; and

2. What does apple.com have to do with the Beatles on iTunes? Most people I would guess access iTunes through the iTunes application.

Now I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just not convinced they're right. If Apple released their referrer stats, that'd be something else entirely.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitwise

[derefr]

> 2. What does apple.com have to do with the Beatles on iTunes? Most people I would guess access iTunes through the iTunes application.

You can link directly to a song or album within iTMS (the application) through an HTTP URL, which happens to be rooted on a subdomain of apple.com, which then redirects you to the actual itms:// scheme URI that opens iTunes.

[chrisbolt]

Doesn't that neglect all of the people who clicked on the iTunes store within iTunes and bought Beatles songs from there, without leaving itms://?