Forum Moderators: bakedjake
I know my site went from 'no data' to 105000 and is still going up right after my brother and I both installed the toolbar! Coincidence? I don't think so.. I turned it off for a few days and I noticed a complete (!) drop-off in my rankings - back to 'no data' again! I figure all I need to do now is make a Korean version of my site to get it in the top 5000 :)
Interested to see how much value people put on these rankings :)
That's what makes the stats interesting. I have one site that is around 40,000 or so, but I don't have the toolbar installed, so I've never tried to 'inflate' the rankings...
When you look at the traffic graph for WebmasterWorld, Alexa shows that our current daily visits puts us in the mid 200's or so...ahead of some major Search Engines to boot.
Combine that will the fact that Brett announced that WebmasterWorld got around a million page views or so a day or was it 2? ago, it makes sense that this place would be close to the top. :)
Also, there are around 20 people or so, in the office where I'm at, that surf WebmasterWorld...and there are probably more offices like that in Silicon Valley, and even around the world.
Alexa's graphs have mirrored our own logs pretty close for over a year and a half. The biggest discrepancy is in number of pages viewed per visitor because Alexa throws out duplicate page views from the same visitor - hence, I feel we are vastly under counted by 25-30% on that particular statistic.
When we were in the 3k-5k site ranking range 2 years ago, I didn't think the stats were very accurate. Same with Search Engine World and my other sites. Those sites down in the 5k+ area start to decline in accuracy. I don't think you can use any of the data after the top 10-15k of sites to base decisions on except your direct competition with equal demographics.
The graphs have gotten more accurate as more people install and use the toolbar. Alexa's site says 7 million and surely there are many more installs since then.
So what's the big deal with Alexa?
Have you compared your Alexa ranking to other publicly available traffic rankings of your site? What, you can't find any other publicly available traffic rankings of your site?
We've built the worlds largest interconnected network that has wired the globe from east-to-west and north-pole to the south-pole. The complexity and the scope of the system is awe inspiring. There is not a square inch of planet where you can not stand in line-of-sight of a satellite and pull in a net connection. The internet is proof of what humanity can do when a really good idea comes of age. We have tamed chaos.
We've have built this ultra advanced number cruncher and plugged into everything from the office to at home in the family den. Yet with a computer in almost every house in some countries we do not have quality statistics on traffic available! Nothing - zip - nada. It is a glaring omission and has hindered our ability to build quality websites.
Net Ratings and Junk Science:
I have been fighting misinformation, bad information, and the downright suspicious information flowing out of the net's ratings firms for years. I firmly believe that the major net ratings firms are junk science, and in some cases bought and paid for statistics.
The shear enormity of the problem with the net ratings systems is glaringly pointed out by the current Alexa top 10 sites. Here is a site in Korea (Daum), that says it is doing 400 million page views a day and by all accounts, that is an accurate figure. It currently ranks #3 on Alexa. That site is NO WHERE to be found on the other ratings firms lists. How could one of the worlds largest sites be completely utterly non-existent to them?
The Public Airwaves/Highways:
You connected to this site via your isp, that routed the traffic to another half dozen to more than thirty systems to get here and return this page to you. During those hops, your data passed through many different systems. In effect, it hopped on the public roadways to ride back and forth between this point and your computer.
Public Data:
We all hold our site statistics and log files as near and dear. Just a few days ago, I said you could ask me anything but how much traffic my site gets. I wasn't kidding.
The sad truth, is that all that data of yours and mine flows over these systems through the agreed upon standard of communication we collectively call The Internet. It's just like your car can flow over any road from a national highway, to the neighbors drive/parkway. That is as near to a definition of a Public Highway -- or as we call it in the states - The Public Airwaves as you can muster. If that is the case, that data should be construed as Public data.
Corporate Data Hoarding:
There are many large internet corporations in the world that have access to incredible data sets. Imagine what would happen if AOL or MSN choose to make their proxy cache server traffic public? What about the large Search Engines and portals that have accumulated a volumes data sets from keyword data, to toolbar surf data?
The Power of Data:
The large corporates have that data, but mid sized corporations, small corporations, and mom & pop sites are not privy to such powerful information. The big sites have an unfair competitive edge in that regard. We all know in this day-and-age that knowledge and data equal money and power. Your ability to run your website effectively is hindered and you are running your site blind without it.
Simple things like knowing whether a surfer is more likely to click on "The Spring Sale is On", or "Spring Sale Today". That little distinction could mean the difference between being profitable and not being profitable.
I read one of those "challenge" articles last week over on ClickZ. You were asked to find the one simple change to a webpage that would dramatically increase ROI many times over. That type of data is childs play for the majors - yet you and I are left to tough it out by our wits alone.
Knights in armor?
So along comes Alexa and starts to make some of the most important simple statistics on the web publicly available. All for free. You don't even have to have a program installed - just visit their website. For the first time in net history, we have a third party sharing volumes of quality information with us.
Not Perfect, but still Excellent
No one is claiming the Alexa system is perfect - not even Alexa. There are many qualifiers they put out on the traffic description information page. However, it is getting better and more accurate every day. The other ratings firms seem to be getting worse.
There is also the possibility that Alexa could take the data back in house or go commercial with it. It is also owned by Amazon.com, who we all know has at times had a reputation for aggressive business practices.
All-in-all, I am quite pleased that the system is out there for us to use. It's not perfect, but it is the best available site traffic data we have available on the web today. That is worth standing up for, and I will continue to do so.
