When comparing the rate of electrochemical processes at different porous electrocatalysts a surface normalization should be used. It is shown for the case of methanol oxidation at PtRu layers electrodeposited on gold substrates that substantially different data are obtained for current, mass spectrometry signals and integrated IR band intensities of the products, with and without normalization of the catalyst surface used. Using stripping of saturated CO coverage as a normalization tool, cyclic voltammograms, on line MS and in situ FTIR spectroscopy give reasonable agreement of catalytic activity towards methanol oxidation.