Alexas graphs really do look nothing like graphs provided by sites :/ who to trust!...
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/octopart.c...
Seriously, cool graph + wd :)
Octopart Traffic
11–20 of 26 posts
Re: Octopart Traffic
#12Alexas graphs really do look nothing like graphs provided by sites :/ who to trust!... http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/octopart.c... Seriously, cool graph + wd :)
Alexa is nuts. It's only useful as a comparison tool for sites which are really popular. Otherwise, their extrapolations just don't make sense statistically.
Re: Octopart Traffic
#13This may be some what unrelated... but www.mcmaster.com is the best website I've ever seen or used for sourcing and buying mechanical or industrial products. Maybe it's worth considering that kind of model, ie more like craigslist, for octopart's homepage vs the google style.
we really like mcmaster-carr's website as well. eventually octopart's website will be closer to that. first we have to aggregate a lot of technical data though. technical data is hard to come by because it is held tightly by a few companies who license it for $100K's. this is one of the problems we are trying to solve.
Re: Octopart Traffic
#14Alexas graphs really do look nothing like graphs provided by sites :/ who to trust!... http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/octopart.c... Seriously, cool graph + wd :)
Alexa is nuts. It's only useful as a comparison tool for sites which are really popular. Otherwise, their extrapolations just don't make sense statistically.
It'd be nice if they showed the error bars on the graphs. I expect they'd be pretty massive unless as you say the site is really up in the top ranks.
Re: Octopart Traffic
#15Congrats fellas! - i'm curious, can you say who your top referring sites are? Does Google dominate 80% of it? Do you spend lots of cycles on SEO? I understand if you aren't comfortable answering these questions in a public forum.
Re: Octopart Traffic
#16Nice! I like it that is not the typical social network. It really solves a real world need saving time and money.
Re: Octopart Traffic
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alexa is nuts. It's only useful as a comparison tool for sites which are really popular. Otherwise, their extrapolations just don't make sense statistically.
It'd be nice if they showed the error bars on the graphs. I expect they'd be pretty massive unless as you say the site is really up in the top ranks.
Though this probably sounds pedantic, it's not intended to be. How would one define an error-bar for alexa's report on octopart?
Isn't the whole problem with alexa, in this case, that the cross-section alexa trackees, is not necessarily the cross-section of people who would be interested in octopart?
Re: Octopart Traffic
#18Great idea. I will wish you luck, but you do not seem to need it anymore.
Re: Octopart Traffic
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'd be nice if they showed the error bars on the graphs. I expect they'd be pretty massive unless as you say the site is really up in the top ranks.
Though this probably sounds pedantic, it's not intended to be. How would one define an error-bar for alexa's report on octopart? Isn't the whole problem with alexa, in this case, that the cross-section alexa trackees, is not necessarily the cross-section of people who would be interested in octopart?
Yes but surely alexa knows how many alexa trackees it has. It knows how much it's scaling that up to make an estimate of the real population.
For example, a very big site, you have enough trackees to make a reasonably statistically valid sample. But smaller sites, you don't see as many trackees, so you set the error bars higher.
Sure, I agree that the system is flawed anyway, seeing as how I don't know a single person who installs the alexa toolbar, and amongst techie sites it's usage is probably 0.
Re: Octopart Traffic
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Though this probably sounds pedantic, it's not intended to be. How would one define an error-bar for alexa's report on octopart? Isn't the whole problem with alexa, in this case, that the cross-section alexa trackees, is not necessarily the cross-section of people who would be interested in octopart?
Yes but surely alexa knows how many alexa trackees it has. It knows how much it's scaling that up to make an estimate of the real population. For example, a very big site, you have enough trackees to make a reasonably statistically valid sample. But smaller sites, you don't see as many trackees, so you set the error bars higher. Sure, I agree that the system is flawed anyway, seeing as how I don't know a single perso…
A more useful depiction of the error would be to somehow calculate the bias in the Alexa population (my guess, tech investors are the only segment of the population using the Alexa toolbar, which is incredibly ironic).
Huge error bars on a near zero estimate don't mean a whole lot except that the experiment producing the data is flawed.