Comments on: Who Will Be First to Sue Alexa?

By: esvl

esvl — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If they want to use another company and build their business upon someone else’s business its their own loss. My opinion.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Yes, Alexa please go bye bye!

By: centernetworks

centernetworks — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

not sure I understand what you mean… could you rephrase?

By: esvl

esvl — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Sorry. What I meant was that people should not base their business success upon the working of another company like Alexa, because if that big company fails they struggle.

For instance they should build their own tracking system instead of depending on Alexa.

By: Anne H

Anne H — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Alan, it’s an interesting question but I don’t think anyone would file suit. Show me two analytic services that agree on site traffic even if they use similar methodologies. I think all the services have a margin of error, some much greater than others. If I were pitching businesses, I wouldn’t rely on Alexa numbers. I would be more inclined to look at some sort service like Quantcast’s verified numbers.

By: Andy Beard

Andy Beard — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I think as far as legal process, if anyone was going to do anything it would have been over Google PageRank last October for paid links, because the green bar is every bit as make believe with a hand fudge factor as Alexa these days.

Ultimately Alexa will use the same reasoning as Google, though Google use terms such as “importance” and “authority”, and Alexa use vague relative traffic.

The evidence on the social media being discounted is very storng, especially on sites like Collective Thoughts that don’t gain a huge amount of traffic, but have the occasional hit on SU or Reddit – those traffic bumps have been removed.

The evidence on the totally messed up equations and double-dipping we hammered out a lot in private before posting. Something is certainly screwed up, but far too obvious a screwup to have got through even fairly careless QA

By: Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

As long as Alexa is the ranking that my advertising revenue depends on, I’m paying attention to them!

By: PJ Brunet

PJ Brunet — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

W/o access to logs you’re getting an estimate, I think most people know that.

If you’re an advertiser, serve the banner yourself (hotlinked off the website you’re advertising on) and you can track the traffic yourself.

Alexa hasn’t been around that long either, I wouldn’t give them too much credit.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I thought everyone with a clue was using quantcast by now.

By: centernetworks

centernetworks — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The issue PJ is that if advertisers use Alexa as part of their decision criteria, they will never get to your point. If the advertiser works with a site, then yes, they can certainly do what you suggest.

By: centernetworks

centernetworks — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The only way quantcast works is if everyone uses the quantified option. Otherwise the comparisons from real-to-fake are meaningless.

By: PJ Brunet

PJ Brunet — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Mark, Quantcast is a nice website, but their numbers say Facebook is primarily 14 y/o black girls. Is that true?

By: MR

MR — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

No matter how rubbish Alexa rankings are, peoples still using it; like there’s a popularity contest! SIGH!!

By: PJ Brunet

PJ Brunet — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I agree it’s a problem if the data isn’t accurate, I was browsing TextLinkAds yesterday and they post an Alexa range (and PageRank) for every site in their network.