Auditing the Internet would seem an impossible task but it is the latest project taken on by the 'beancounters' who track newspaper sales.
The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) is developing a system to count the number of visitors to sites on the increasingly popular international computer systems that make up the Net.
It would overcome unreliable figures produced by site providers, chief executive John Beadell said.
Functions such as downloading of graphics were often counted as a number of visits and inflated the number of users, Mr Beadell said.
Sites claiming 60,000 visitors every day might only really have a fraction of that number, he said.
'Everyone wants to set up advertising on the Net. I think this is a truly global product.' Mr Beadell, who is visiting Hong Kong from his headquarters in Britain, said ABC organisations in the United States and Europe were involved in developing the system.