determining site-user profiles

[newreality]

How to get particulars on who my site visitors are, like age range, single or married, disposable income, etc.

How are sites getting this?

[AussieWebmaster]

they use behavioral info that ties to demographics, or capture info in forms etc...

[jimbeetle]

One technique used by smaller sites is to ask general demographic questions during signup for a newsletter or access to a members' section. Alternatively, some ad agencies initially run survey type ads to collect demo information for new publishers' sites.

As an aside, the big boys have been getting increasingly sophisticated, now able to track people all across the 'Net and pull in demo and other info from different sources. A recent interesting read is this Register article (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/12/inside_comscore/) on how ComScore does it.

[newreality]

Came across this (http://www.quantcast.com) & wondering how they get their data.
Looks a little loosely gathered.

[jimbeetle]

Simple, it's "based on a uniquely holistic media measurement system (http://www.quantcast.com/docs/how-quantcast-works) that combines the best characteristics of other web audience measurement approaches."

(Throw in two ;-) for every time they use the term "holistic" on that page.)

Just assumptions, but the "panel-based data" is probably collected by a toolbar or something similar. The "directly measured data" could come from a script or bug + cookies on the publishers' sites.