I call bullshit re: Alexa complaint! We have the same number of uniques (although 2x less pageviews), and Alexa shows much lower rank for our site - about 3,000. Their Alexa numbers are overly favorable (Alexa rank 147).
Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc
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Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc
#42Somebody please explain ad cpm and stuff like that (complete noob) For what I understand 400M pageviews = $400K a month just in ads (at just 1ct per pageview)
well, for starters, "1ct per pageview" means a lot of things. Most importantly would be -- quality.
Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's weird, but as a stats guy, this makes total sense to me. They are sampling a small (hopefully random) group of internet users in order to draw conclusions about how the population at large behaves. It's no different than a political poll. Just like political pollsters, they express their results in relative terms to sidestep the much trickier issue of guessing N, the population size. Hence pollsters do not try t…
Not so much into stats but isn't a good statistical sampling has to have a uniform distribution over population space like strata/demographics? I wonder what their sample size is for 1.56 billion internet users ( http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=total+internet+users ). As a side note: Alexa is an Amazon.com company!, when did that happen?
1999. If I recall correctly, it was one of their first acquisitions. It didn't make sense to me then, either.
Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc
#44I call bullshit re: Alexa complaint! We have the same number of uniques (although 2x less pageviews), and Alexa shows much lower rank for our site - about 3,000. Their Alexa numbers are overly favorable (Alexa rank 147).
I think the overall point is that the indirect method of monitoring is NOT accurate.
Are you a quantified site? If not, then you basically proved reddit's point.
Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's weird, but as a stats guy, this makes total sense to me. They are sampling a small (hopefully random) group of internet users in order to draw conclusions about how the population at large behaves. It's no different than a political poll. Just like political pollsters, they express their results in relative terms to sidestep the much trickier issue of guessing N, the population size. Hence pollsters do not try t…
Its different from political poll because it is not random. Its like looking at internet usage pattern of Indian internet users and predicting the traffic of Reddit, when most of the traffic of reddit comes from USA/EU/Canada. And that's exactly whats happening, Alexa relies on people who install Alexa toolbar and from what I remember reading most of Alexa users are from South-east asia, or more precisely, from India…
They have rankings by nation in addition to the overalls. Their base is far from a scientific sample, but I think they give better ballpark figures than some give them credit for.
Their "what's hot" section often has stuff about wordpress and the like, so there are obviously many webmasters. There is plenty of American Idol and all that, also. I have no idea, but I'd guess they advertise the toolbar in different places and maybe allow it to be bundled with screensavers or whatever.
Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc
#46I thought the whole point of Quantcast is that they can directly measure traffic instead of trying to guess. They don't even charge for it: http://www.quantcast.com/info/publisher-overview
And how do they actually measure those numbers without (i) guessing; (ii) having some JS on the page, or (iii) using Voodoo Black Magic.
I think it's ridiculous to believe ANY company that claims that they can measure traffic of a site accurately without the DIRECT INVOLVEMENT of the site's owners. How are they doing it? Through the ether? Come on! Data, people. Data. Google's figured that out, maybe other companies should too.
Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its different from political poll because it is not random. Its like looking at internet usage pattern of Indian internet users and predicting the traffic of Reddit, when most of the traffic of reddit comes from USA/EU/Canada. And that's exactly whats happening, Alexa relies on people who install Alexa toolbar and from what I remember reading most of Alexa users are from South-east asia, or more precisely, from India…
They have rankings by nation in addition to the overalls. Their base is far from a scientific sample, but I think they give better ballpark figures than some give them credit for. Their "what's hot" section often has stuff about wordpress and the like, so there are obviously many webmasters. There is plenty of American Idol and all that, also. I have no idea, but I'd guess they advertise the toolbar in different plac…
I think that the only tech-savvy people that use Alexa toolbar are webmasters who are trying to get their Alexa numbers up, basically.
Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc
#48I suspect that the vast majority of Redditors use Ad-block or equivalent. Reddit might get millions of page views, but if that doesn;t translate into ad-impressions then they are effectively invisible to the money-people.
Even if most Reddit users did block ads, and as noted in another comment it's actually about 30%, reddit has other ways of displaying ads. Their "upcoming stories" box occasionally displays "sponsored links". There are other things that reddit could do to get a sponsor's message to adblock users that would be similarly non-invasive (contests, etc.), too.
Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc
#49I thought the whole point of Quantcast is that they can directly measure traffic instead of trying to guess. They don't even charge for it: http://www.quantcast.com/info/publisher-overview
If you let them, they can directly measure the traffic of your website. If you sign up for their service, Quantcast's numbers will be very close to your own Google Analytics.
But, if you don't sign up, they'll still "measure" your traffic and come up with results that are no better than the other web traffic rankers. I don't know why anybody takes sites like these seriously anymore. Everybody I've met who had a website with decent traffic has said that these sites are always way off. I'd imagine that Alexa's main reason for reporting a ridiculous statistic like % of global/country traffic is that it makes it harder for website owners to realize how wrong they are.
Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc
#50I thought the whole point of Quantcast is that they can directly measure traffic instead of trying to guess. They don't even charge for it: http://www.quantcast.com/info/publisher-overview
And how do they actually measure those numbers without (i) guessing; (ii) having some JS on the page, or (iii) using Voodoo Black Magic. I think it's ridiculous to believe ANY company that claims that they can measure traffic of a site accurately without the DIRECT INVOLVEMENT of the site's owners. How are they doing it? Through the ether? Come on! Data, people. Data. Google's figured that out, maybe other companies…
Wild guess: maybe they look at the increase in IP ids? On a lot of TCP/IP stacks they are not randomized, and can be measured from the outside by simply looking at 2 successive datagrams from the server. So, make up a reasonable estimation of how many IP datagrams are sent in an average visit. Make sure to do the same thing on all frontend servers. Congratulations, you now have a reasonably credible bullshit number to chart.