Forum Moderators: phranque
Has anybody here tested the relative accuracy of the stats on MetricsMarket.com? I have looked at the results of ten sites I have traffic logs on and on a relative site traffic basis (A gets X times the traffic of B, B gets X times the traffic of C) the stats have been within +/-10%. Yes, the amount of user sessions tends to be off and it doesn’t even try to measure page views, however, the relative site traffic has been pretty accurate for my small tests.
The only reason I’m interested in their stats is I would obviously like to have a third part source of info on sites I’m considering partnerships with and Alexa is just plain silly. As any webmaster who’s ever simply installed the Alexa toolbar while editing sites knows, it is ridiculously easy to manipulate the stats that Alexa displays for sites. Look at what happened to WW on Alexa. A few threads about Alexa show up on this site, webmasters install the toolbar to increase their rankings, and BAM, WW is one of the most visited sites on the net.
I realize there will never be an accurate third-party method of determining the traffic of other sites. However, before writing off the stats at MetricsMarket as ‘crap’ like the other thread I saw, it would be nice to see some info/stats on what cause the conclusion. I just see a lot better correlation between what I know from the logs and what I see reported on MetricsMarket than the whacky numbers I’ve gotten from Alexa.
If you want my answer; they're both "crap" and I really wouldn't base anything on stats provided by either (unless your audience is completely gormless).
(unless your audience is completely gormless).
From past front page articles on Webmasterworld…
As any webmaster who’s ever simply installed the Alexa toolbar while editing sites knows, it is ridiculously easy to manipulate the stats that Alexa displays for sites.
That's your quote...
As much as I like WebmasterWorld I don't really think it is in the top 300 sites on the internet. It is in the top 300 sites of sites visited by people with the Alexa toolbar installed and the audience which frequents it has a disproportionally large amount of alexa toolbar users.
If you would like some accurate data then go for some of the companies which have deals with major ISP's etc. That's where you will get indicative data - but you'll have to pay for it - I'm not saying it is anything more than indicative - but at least you know exactly where the data is coming from. You get what you pay for.
