6 Things I’ve Learned from Alexaholic

by Pete Abilla on July 20, 2006

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Continuing what I began a while ago on the Things I learned from Google Trends, I thought I’d share what I’ve learned from Alexa Traffic data. I stopped at 6 search items, because I wasn’t creative enough this morning to think of more, but I’m sure you’ll be able to think of other interesting traffic comparisons. But, first . . .

What is Alexaholic?

Alexaholic is not affiliated with Alexa, but wholly depends on Alexa data in order to render their charts. It’s a great tool; it’s a free version of comscore, is how I like to look at it. Here are some other reasons to like Alexaholic according to the ‘About’ Page:

  1. Alexa is currently the best source for free and public comparative Web user traffic data.
  2. Newbies with the Alexa Toolbar are not the only source of data. Firefox users with Craig Raw’s cool SearchStatus extension should note that their browsing behavior is similarly beingphoned-home to Alexa, and included in the statistics you see here.
  3. Statistical significance is attainable with only a small subset of the population – ask a pollster or a high school mathteacher.
  4. The key is “comparative” traffic data. If you wantto know exactly how many page views and visitors your site is getting,get a good webserver log analysis tool. But if you want to quicklycompare your site’s traffic to your competitors’ sites, Alexa is your friend.

+++++

  1. There are more eyeballs looking at Yahoo! than are looking at MSN or Google.
  2. I no longer work for this company, but I was there for 6 months; it looks like shmula, my personal blog, has a broader reach in its 3.5 months than that company which has been around for much longer.
  3. Digg is bigger than the Wall Street Journal, but is head-to-head with The New York Times.
  4. Amazon.com and eBay are competing for the same set of eyeballs.
  5. In the war of the social networks, MySpace undoubtedly rocks Friendster, Linkedin, and Facebook.
  6. In the battle of the web 2.0 commentators, Techcrunch is bigger than Valleywag, and Mashable is humbly last . . . but, Valleywag is hands-down funnier than both of them.

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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

Peter Kazanjy July 20, 2006 at 10:08 am

Hey there,

Might have to disagree with you on the claim about New York Times, WSJ, and Digg. You’re using pageviews as your signifier, and saying that this means that they have similar audience sizes. However, I think the use profiles are likely a bit different between the two groups. That is, people go on WSJ and read the front page. Same with the NYT. But I know there are a LOT of Digg junkies out there that refresh that thing like crazy, and pump up the pageviews. So some (maybe quite a bit) of those pageviews are junk, just like the MySpace “pageviews” that result from the crappy site designt that requires like five clicks to send a message, each with its own pageview.

Besides that, Alexaholic is certainly a fun tool.

jordy July 20, 2006 at 4:04 pm

I think the one thing you have to be careful of is that Alexa, dependent on it’s toolbar to accumulate data, favors the technically savvy. People that regularly visit Bed Bath and Beyond are much less likely to have the toolbar installed than people who visit Technorati, and the statistics probably reflect that.

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