• 12/14/2007 - ArtistServer News and a new site: FreeMusicLicensing.com
• 09/18/2007 - AritstServer and ToneThis Serve Up Indie Ringtones
• 09/11/2007 - Running LightTPD and PHP on Windows
• 09/06/2007 - Compete.com -vs- Alexa.com - Comparing Website Rank
• 08/29/2007 - HostMySite.com Limits ColdFusion, Does Not Tell Customers
• 08/14/2007 - New Song: Chocolate Rain - Sonic Remix
• 08/03/2007 - If You Use Open Source, Leave the License and Credit
• 07/31/2007 - Add Links to Profiles on MySpace, Facebook, and More
• 07/23/2007 - SocialNetwork.in API Promotes Cross Site Networking
• 07/22/2007 - AddToBookmarks.com Script Updated to Version 1.1

In the past, I've expressed my views about Alexa.com's data and the Web site stats they make available. While I'm sure they've worked to improve their data processing, and have hopefully dealt with the 'gaming' issues (where people would drive their rank up), I'm still unsure that the data is anything more than a generalized indicator for the Web.  Sites like AdBrite use your Alexa rank as a means to show advertisers your site's worth, and many top bloggers quote these same numbers when talking about sites.  Why? Because it's been around for five years, and it was the only option for such data.

Fortunately, good ideas spread, start-ups come to life, and usually improve the overall market by raising the bar. In the Web stats and comparison market, Alexa was joined by Compete.com (last year?), and we can at least compare data between the two services.

I'll leave it to you to visit compete.com to learn how they get their data. Alexa gets their from their browser toolbars.  Attention Firefox users... Alexa now has a toolbar for you too.

I think the best way to compare data between the two services is to look at a specific collection of sites which are in competition with each other - a single vertical market. Since I run a social music site (ArtistServer.com), I selected to compare my vertical as an example. Below, you'll see a table which lists most of my competitors, there are many more than this, although these are what I consider "music hosting services" that cater to artists/musicians, which is ArtistServer's focus.

What do you think? At first it would seems that as you move down in rank, that the numbers would have a greater variance, but that's not the case. The numbers simply jump around - for example, look at ReverbNation or Funender, how is it that their rankings are so different between Alexa and Compete?

I think if we can gain access to a third or fourth dataset from another service, the best thing to do would be to average their rankings together to give us a single ranking.  While the results would continue to just be an 'indicator' and not a real ranking, it might be a step in the right direction.

So - who is going to build the first Web Rank Aggregator? Or does it already exist?

Possibly it was my tone or my approach, I'm not sure, but I am glad that my RSS reader, FeedDemon cached my comment on the TechCrunch blog, because it never made onto the site. Yes, I was censored on a top tech blog... pfft!

UPDATE: 9:30pm I see my comment/reply on the TechCrunch blog is now being displayed - so it seems my post was approved at some point today. Thanks Michael. :)

Here's a screehshot:

Just in case others want to read my comment, I'm posting it below since it was shot down over at TechCrunch:

[quote]Comment by Michael Arrington — March 12, 2006 @ 11:30 pm
just a random note: alexaholic is so great. [/quote]

Sure, if you like bad data and a system that can be cheated.

Alexa is being gamed/cheated, and the data is generated from a specific population of Web users.

Ask anyone who works in the field of stats if Alexa’s data is worth studying, and they would tell you no after finding out how the data is gathered and gamed.

=====

Mike - please do people a favor and research how poor the data really is, and stop promoting false information.

How would you feel about your posts about a company you promoted on your blog if it was found that they were cheating Alexa?

Want more information:
===================================

Alexa Totally Unreliable? — Business Logs
http://businesslogs.com/reviews/alexa_totally_unreliable.php

Why Alexa Ranking Alone is Worthless : SEO Book.com
http://www.seobook.com/archives/000034.shtml

Faking Alexa traffic ranking
http://www.techdigger.com/faking-alexa-traffic-ranking/

Manipulating Alexa Traffic Rankings
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=3044

http://www.alexasurf.com/

http://alexabooster.com/

=====

I was just blogging about this topic the other day: http://www.gideonmarken.com/index.cfm/a/9/blog/697/

=====

At any rate… don’t you find the alexa ‘reach’ chart for Tagworld to be a bit odd… There’s some strange drops in the data.

For example, if the site is growing, then why is 1/2 of the traffic gone from just two weeks ago? When you look at the ‘reach chart,’ you’ll see that they are currently at where they were last December? How about the dropouts on the ‘rank’ chart?

====

My main point is that you seem to like Alexa, and I understand that - but I’m concerned about the validity of Alexa data, and the degree of power those charts have. Placing data and charts on a popular blog like TechCrunch is a powerful advertisement for those sites/services being covered. The people who visit this blog expect the content to be true and valid - which is why I’m responding, as there is too much evidence showing that Alexa data is not trustworthy.

It’s imperitive that our references and analytic data is valid if we are going to use them to understand where we are going. If we are to move forward on unproven data, we are only serving those with the most cash in the end.

- Gideon Marken

So Michael, I hope you understand that my post wasn't meant to be negative towards you, and certainly you don't have the time to research if Alexa Ranking is bogus or not, BUT... you do have the readership to help expose what is really going on with Alexa Randing.

Let's build our industry on solid truths, and the best way to make that happen is for those with a voice to speak out, and for us to question what we are told. If we leave the hype unchecked, we'll find ourselves in Bubble 2.0, and that's not fun!

Just in case you were not aware, Alexa is not a valid means of comparing sites - it's some form of an indicator, but should in no way be considered for solid conclusions or judgements on how popular/busy a site is.

The Alexa user base is only a sample of the Internet population, and sites with relatively low traffic will not be accurately ranked by Alexa due to the statistical limitations of the sample. Plus - it's a system that people 'game.' Here are some links that cover the subject in more detail.

Alexa Totally Unreliable? — Business Logs
http://businesslogs.com/reviews/alexa_totally_unreliable.php

Why Alexa Ranking Alone is Worthless : SEO Book.com
http://www.seobook.com/archives/000034.shtml

Faking Alexa traffic ranking
http://www.techdigger.com/faking-alexa-traffic-ranking/

Manipulating Alexa Traffic Rankings
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=3044

And how about this gem... http://www.alexasurf.com/

Alexa Surf provides webmasters with a way to boost your Alexa Rank. This is free for anyone who wishes to Increase your Alexa Ranking for Free.

Are you looking for top rankings on alexa.com? If so then you have come to the right place! Alexabooster has been boosting thousands of sites for over 3 years!

Using the alexabooster software can boost your ranking anywhere from 100K or better! Alexabooster is a simple 3 step software that runs hidden in your sytem tray.

And as I thought about it, I realized that Alexa has become a critical tool for me as I try to understand what's really happening on the Internet.

Whenever someone tells me about a web service, one of the first things I do is run an Alexa search on it, find out its traffic, what kind of people use it, etc.

Here is another influential VC blogger that seems to rely on Alexa: http://www.genuinevc.com/archives/2005/11/tracking_traffi.htm

What are people seeing in the charts - is it real data, is it the site owner and all his friends boosting their site - is it a room of computers set to refresh and browse a site all day every day with the toolbar on? How would you know?

Should you care? YES!

I think it's getting to be time to expose how bad this is by having a bunch of people pick a random site each month - and have those people use the techniques for abusing the system to send that sit up the ranking. If the system is as poor as it seems, we should be able to manipulate the results and place the chose site near the top - at least in the under 100,000 range. Even better - we could put up a bogus site with a domain - and run it as the testing ground since it would start fresh with no data in the Alexa system.

Why challenge the Alexa Ranking?

Because we desperately need data like this - we need charts - we want to compare... and we use Alexa because it seems like the best thing out there. Which is why people are building and launching sites like http://www.alexaholic.com/ - a site I was just reading about over at Ajaxian: http://ajaxian.com/archives/alexaholic-get-your-alexia-stats-fix/

I can understand why the developer built the site, but I'm also troubled that someone who is obviously smart and intelligent would get behind such a broken system without posting anything on his site about it. Although... that would cut down on the uptake of his service - or maybe he doesn't know how there's a whole scene built around manipulating Alexa. Chances are, it's just the developer meeting a need and figuring it's the best thing out there and people want it. Which is ok, that's a developer's job.

I just have a hard time with cheating, and when you realize that cheating is going on in a system, and others rely on that system and do not realize the level of manipulation, it's a sad situation. False perceptions based on false data which in turn ripple out into other forms of falsehood is a receipe for disaster.

What could work better?

I'm not sure if it's possible, but I was thinking if Google Analytics could provide a feed of your traffic, that a 3rd party site could be setup that would allow people to register their traffic feeds and have that data analyzed against the whole collection. There's still a chance of people gaming their systems - but that could be dealt with to some degree on the analyzing side. Just check IPs and look for abuse patterns - which could be done through code and flag sites that seem to be generating fake traffic.

Or Google could just get some code together and simply add an option in Google Analytics you could check off that would merge your data into a pool for anaylzing and generating a Google Analytics account for 'the Web' - which would allow us to view data across all participants (limited view ofcourse).

Until the day comes that someone can provide a system that fixes the holes Alexa provides, we have to accept that there isn't a means for comparing a Website against another unless both sites provide their data untouched for analyzing to an unbiased 3rd party.