How accurate, or credible is alexa.com summarizing website traffic for
a given URL.

thx
chumley

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"Chumley Walrus" <springb2k@yahoo.com> wrote:

> How accurate, or credible is alexa.com summarizing website traffic for
> a given URL.

they use the Alexa (spy)bar to measure this, so you see statistics based
on their measurements. Since they have quite a lot of users (can't
remember the exact figure) using the bar, it might be accurate enough for
what it reports.

--
John
Sig-o-matic says:
OMG, lolzzz (c)... brb

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On 6 Feb 2006 13:02:04 -0800, "Chumley Walrus" <springb2k@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>How accurate, or credible is alexa.com summarizing website traffic for
>a given URL.
>
>thx
>chumley

IMO, very inaccurare, and the results can be fudged.
Only gives results from the people that have the spyware toolbar
installed.
plh
Paul

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Chumley Walrus wrote:

> How accurate, or credible is alexa.com summarizing website traffic for
> a given URL.


Slightly less random than a randon number generator.



--
Brian Wakem
Email: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/b.wakem/myemail.png

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About 1% at best.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Chumley Walrus" <springb2k@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1139259596.492681.286060@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> How accurate, or credible is alexa.com summarizing website traffic for
> a given URL.
>
> thx
> chumley
>

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__/ [John Bokma] on Monday 06 February 2006 21:07 \__

> "Chumley Walrus" <springb2k@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 


Laughably 'accurate'. Webmasters prefer to boost their own ranks, so quite
naturally they tend to permit spying on self. The result is that sites which
attract Webmasters 'beat the clock'.

Arguments could also be made which take into account the operating system
uses (compatibility) and user awareness to spying, which is closely-related
to competence with IT.

[vbcol=seagreen]
> they use the Alexa (spy)bar to measure this, so you see statistics based
> on their measurements. Since they have quite a lot of users (can't
> remember the exact figure) using the bar, it might be accurate enough for
> what it reports.


For the record, they also gather statistics from the A9 toolbar, which is
available for Firefox. If there is an Amazon toolbar, they would use that
too. They are desperate for larger samples. We live in an age when people
pay a lot of money for eavesdropping, contact information, and people's
history. It helps targetted ads, detection of piracy, and marketable
statistics.

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz      |    "Spam enchanted evening..."
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Paul B wrote:
> On 6 Feb 2006 13:02:04 -0800, "Chumley Walrus" <springb2k@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> 
>
>
> IMO, very inaccurare, and the results can be fudged.

I'm sure mathematicians can work this out but I had one site that had
5,000 page views per day last year and was around 300,000 in Alexa. I
installed the Alexa toolbar on my browser and visited the site once per
day and it went into the top 100,000. That would imply to me that the
few people have the toolbar installed.

----------------------
http://www.abcseo.com/

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__/ [davidof] on Tuesday 07 February 2006 09:55 \__

> Paul B wrote: 
>
> I'm sure mathematicians can work this out but I had one site that had
> 5,000 page views per day last year and was around 300,000 in Alexa. I
> installed the Alexa toolbar on my browser and visited the site once per
> day and it went into the top 100,000. That would imply to me that the
> few people have the toolbar installed.

Based on all the numbers that I see in my status bar, my very rough guess ha
s
been (for quite a while) that around 100,000 people have the A9 and/or the
Alexa toolbar installed and set to 'history enabled'. A similar estimate for
Netscraft...

I wonder if a Web search could reveal the answer. They must perceive it as a
very precious secret. It could shatter the value of their figures, which are
grossly 'massaged'.

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com  |    SuSE Linux     |     PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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On Tue, 07 Feb 2006 10:04:24 +0000, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups@schestowitz.com> wrote:

>__/ [davidof] on Tuesday 07 February 2006 09:55 \__
> 
>
>Based on all the numbers that I see in my status bar, my very rough guess h
as
>been (for quite a while) that around 100,000 people have the A9 and/or the
>Alexa toolbar installed and set to 'history enabled'. A similar estimate fo
r
>Netscraft...
>
>I wonder if a Web search could reveal the answer. They must perceive it as 
a
>very precious secret. It could shatter the value of their figures, which ar
e
>grossly 'massaged'.
>
>Roy

I've never given their figures any value.

BB
--

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This comes up often, even Alexa themselves state that high values
are not representitive:

"Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable"
http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/tr...learn_more.html


--
Mike

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