Qihoo responds that traffic is undervalued

Absrtact: Yesterday (July 3) Another U.S. short research agency Anonymousanalytics (anonymous analysis) on its website issued against Qihoo 360 of the query report, that Qihoo 360 existence of traffic fraud problem, should be returned to the city. By this effect, Qihoo 360 shares plunged 7.4 in the day

Yesterday (July 3) Another US short research agency anonymousanalytics (anonymous analysis) on its website issued a query on Qihoo 360, that Qihoo 360 has the problem of traffic fraud, should be returned to the city. By this effect, Qihoo 360 shares plunged 7.46% in the day.

Yesterday (July 4), Qihoo 360 against the above "short" to refute, and the "Daily economic news" issued a statement to respond that their traffic is not false, the ComScore traffic monitoring plug-in is removed because the plug-in will be a European third party anti-virus software mistakenly reported as a virus. However, this claim is again questioned by anonymous analysis.

Qihoo responds that traffic is undervalued

This is not Qihoo 360 first encounter short, citronresearch in more than six months, a total of 360 questioned Qihoo 6 times.

This time, the 17-page query body cited the anonymous analysis of data from ComScore, the US Internet traffic monitoring agency. Data said, February 2012 ~ April, Qihoo 360 of the site navigation page clicks far below Baidu's hao123.

A similar problem has been shorted by foreign agencies, which has also upset the Qihoo 360CFO Xu Zuori, who made it clear after the anonymous analysis that the information it invoked was "inaccurate".

"The report is fundamentally just a repetition of what other short sellers have said previously, and Qihoo 360 has previously made a denial and clarification. "In between the lines, Xu Zuori seems a bit tired of the above short behavior."

Qihoo 360 had an official response to the issue yesterday (July 4). Qihoo 360 believes that the hao.360.cn and hao123 data cited in the agency's report are inaccurate and misleading.

"These data come from small sample studies, based only on sampling information, and the accuracy of the method depends on the size and distribution of the sample, so the sampling data has many limitations and deviations." Qihoo 360 believes that such sample methods do not fully tally the business volume of Qihoo 360 or even "seriously underestimate the flow of Qihoo".

Anonymous analysis said that the data on Qihoo 360 traffic was purchased directly from third party comscore. And then comscore released a statement saying that, at present, ComScore did not release any of Qihoo 360 's website data. This makes the authority of the data more questionable.

Short-selling institutions to question Qihoo's response

In addition, the anonymous analysis of the agency is the "technology flow" route, so that Qihoo 360 on a number of technical aspects of the problem, especially the ComScore plug-in removed the problem has responded.

Anonymous analysis indicated in the report that the plugin was removed three months after the ComScore plugin was added to Qihoo 360 's code. Qihoo 360 was added to the ComScore plug-in to placate analysts, investors and critics who asked Qihoo 360 management to provide independent verification of its network traffic. The agency also refers to Qihoo 360 's removal of the plugin because it is "not happy with the data that comscore monitors."

Qihoo 360 yesterday acknowledged the installation and removal of the plug-in in its public response, however, the company said that the voluntary addition of the ComScore plugin was to help comscore adjust and improve the statistical model on panel data, while removing the plugin was temporary because "during this time, A European Third-party antivirus software incorrectly defines this label as a Trojan horse. "It takes time to solve this problem.

"We will continue to work with comscore to strengthen data tracking and to adjust and improve sampling data collection methods and statistical models." "Qihoo 360, President Xiangdong, said in a response that Qihoo 360 would provide investors with reliable third-party traffic data."

However, anonymous analysis yesterday evening through the foreign media to the Qihoo 360 response to the above, and said the practice is "a technical fallacy."

We would like to know, in the end, which European anti-virus software company's products mistakenly reported as a Trojan horse. The representative of anonymous analysis said to the media that any large anti-virus software company that could affect the 360 flow of Qihoo would be aware of the release of data analysis for the major monitoring bodies such as comscore, Alexa and googleanalytics.

At the same time, the agency for Qihoo 360 "for the user experience to remove Plug-ins," said the statement did not understand. Since Qihoo 360 claims that most of its users are using their own antivirus products, the latter will not be erroneously reported in the ComScore plug-in, and the agency has made it clear that it wants to know how many users will be affected by the false positives.