Well, no we didn’t, but as I’ve said before, when is Google going to gift the world with a non broken version of Alexa? Google Peter Norvig does a good job of anecdotally proving the obvious. (via another Googler, Matt Cutts).
For example, let’s look at the log stats for my site and for some of my friends who have recently published their stats for 2006. We list the actual number of visits and pageviews, and the Alexa numbers for reach and pageviews. The difference is quite profound.
Hey John, congrats on making the “The 50 Most Important People on the Web” list! You even beat out Kevin Rose and Tim Berners-Lee…
Congrats,
Mark
http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070305/tc_pcworld/129301
here is another one from the popurls founder:
tomatic.com/p/alexa-is-just-delusive
John,
I wonder why they went to all of the trouble to update inaccurate information (note recent changes). They could do a much better job.
And, congratulations for the PC World nod. You deserve it!
So sad…here’s hoping Google decides to share soon…
BTW – Congrats on the PCWorld list!
John,
Boy, there has been a lot of Alexa bashing lately! I agree with premise of the article, that smaller sites do truly suffer from that bias so badly that it makes Alexa laughable. However, for the larger sites (say, Top 500 global) why isn’t Alexa reasonably accurate, at least on a relative basis? Unless the bias changes radically (which I see no reason why it should) it should be decently accurate.
http://battellemedia.com/searchmob/story/Googles-Peter-Norvig-Reacts-to-Alexas-Inaccuracy/
Is anyone bothering to read SearchMOB –
it is very frustrating – time and time and time again – to spend time submiting stories early – only to have them ignored – then later to find out afterwards they have been added to the SearchBLOG homepage, while the SearchMOB submission is lying ignored in the submission queue.
SearchEngines STILL can not Vote on any submissions – even as the top member
I’d speculate that sooner or later Google Analytics gives its users an option to make high level info public, and all of a sudden you have a real server based and reliable third party standard for traffic tracking.
John, why do you assume Google’s numbers would be any better than Alexa’s? Perhaps the Google toolbar is used more often than the Alexa toolbar, but said usage is just as subject to fraud as anything else (click fraud, index spamming, etc.). Others from the Internet technical community agree with me. There is also skepticism from other quarters.