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Posts with tag alexa

Filed under: Internet, Google, Search

Google takes on Compete, Alexa

Google trends websites
Everybody knows that Alexa, Compete, and other web services that track web site traffic are inherently flawed. Because they compile third party data instead of looking at your actual server data, you can never be sure that the statistics you're reading are accurate. But hey, if you really want to see whether Engadget is more popular than Gizmodo, they're the only game in town, right?

Now there's a new player in the web traffic comparison game. Google has added the ability to search for websites in Google Trends. While there's no guarantee that the stats Google spits back are any more accurate than the ones you'll find from Alexa or Compete, the service does give you one more source for comparison.

Search Engine Land reports
that Google grabs its numbers from a combination of sources including search traffic, anonymous Google Analytics figures and other third party marketing data.

[via VentureBeat]

Filed under: Internet, Web services

Alexa tweaks its ranking system for more accurate results

Alexa
Web site ranking service Alexa has long been one of the most used, and one of the least trusted ways to figure out how popular a web site is. That's because it's difficult to determine a site's actual traffic without access to the owner's private data. But Alexa's reliance on a small army of users who installed a browser toolbar had an obvious tendency to skew the results toward tech-heavy web sites.

Now Alexa is using data from "multiple sources" and not just the toolbar to create more accurate rankings. The company isn't really saying what those sources are, but many web sites will see an adjustment in their Alexa traffic reports. Alexa also isn't admitting that its rankings were incorrect before, just that they were "different."

You'll also notice that you can only get graphs for the last 9 months of traffic. Alexa is recalculating older data and will add multi-year graphs soon.

[via TechCrunch]

Filed under: Internet, Google, Googleholic

Googleholic for February 19, 2008

Googleholic for February 19, 2008
Welcome to Googleholic - your bi-weekly fix of everything Google!

This edition covers:
  • Google loses #2 spot on Alexa rankings
  • Blueprint of Google's new data center in Harper's magazine
  • Google Adwords makes changes to URL policy

Read more →

Filed under: Web services

Check web site stats with Xinu

Xinu
Did you know that Google has indexed 18,800 pages for Download Squad? To be honest, neither did we. But that's the sort of information you can get from Xinu, a new web stats tracker.

Just type a URL into Xinu and sit back while it compiles data from all the usual suspects plus a few unusual ones. You'll get the site's Technorati, Alexa, and Google details. but Xinu also grabs data from Yahoo!, Windows Live Search, Lycos, Digg, Bloglines, Clipmarks, and a bunch of other services.

But Xinu doesn't stop there. It also gives you several rather useless statistics like the number of words and characters in a web site's name. Maybe they just wanted to have enough data to fill a whole page.

Update: As has been pointed out in the comments, it looks like the site has been suspended. We'll keep you posted if we hear that Xinu resurfaces.

[via TechCrunch]

Filed under: Business, Internet, News, Web services

Does sampling user data give an accurate picture of traffic?


If you've ever played the web traffic game, where big numbers can mean big advertiser dollars --and small numbers can mean going bust -- you're probably keenly aware of the lousy accuracy of "panel" based sampling methods used to rate and rank sites against each other.

BusinessWeek takes a look at how inaccuracy means trouble for some web upstarts, and at the ongoing struggle by some to straighten out the numbers game. Digg, for example, recently hired heavy-hitting web analytics firm Web Side Story to get to the bottom of a massive gap in their own numbers and those presented by traffic rating firms. Digg's own data showed 15 million uniques per month, while comScore put them at 1-2 million unique visitors for the same period. The difference in ad dollars for a gap like that are enormous, but percentage-wise they can't begin to compare to the plight of many smaller web-fish. "For many, traffic numbers decide not just the price of an ad but whether the advertiser inquires about an ad at all"

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Utilities, Web services

Get smart profiles and traffic histories of websites with Compete


Compete aims to help users by showcasing websites that are trusted, transparent and add value to both the end user and the internet in general.

Compete has a few different products running, SnapShot, Toolbar, and Search. Snapshot is a handy service that provides traffic history and competitive analysis (similar to Statsaholic), which is great for search gurus and online marketing individuals. Toolbar is a browsing tool for IE and Firefox that provides real time SnapShot information to its users. Complete Search is built on Yahoo's search technology, and weaves in SnapShot results to provide trust scores and search results.

This site and the tools it offers isn't for everyone, but those that only care to be presented with what Compete sees as safe, popular and valuable to visitors might find it useful.

Filed under: Internet

Pirate Bay, mininova, and Torrentspy among top Alexa sites

mininova, Torrentspy, and The Pirate Bay on Alexa
TorrentFreak is reporting that three top BitTorrent tracker sites--The Pirate Bay, mininova, and Torrentspy--have accomplished the inevitable and entered the Alexa 200, the top 200 most-trafficked sites on the web acccording to Alexa. Torrentspy has the highest rank at 153, followed by mininova at 165, and The Pirate Bay barely squeezing in at 198. While nobody argues that Alexa's rankings are the picture of accuracy, it does give a pretty good indication of web trends, and this seems like a pretty big trend. TorrentFreak speculates that it was IsoHunt's recent (temporary) shutdown that bumped these sites into the top 200 (with its spillover traffic going to them), and the Alexa chart would seem to confirm that. Now that IsoHunt is back up, I wonder if it will gain back that traffic, knocking the other sites down a notch.

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Blogging, Web services, Freeware, Social Software

Blog Juice Calculator

Blog Juice CalculatorText Link Ads is providing an interesting utility that will allow you to index your blog's importance in some specific categories versus other blogs in the same space, called the Blog Juice Calculator. You can also compare your site's relative importance to the top performers. For example, Download Squad gets a very respectable 8.4 in the Computers / Technology category, which puts us about tied with Robert Scoble's blog, and slightly trailing the likes of TechCrunch, LifeHacker, and of course Engadget.

Google Juice is currently calculated based on information from Technorati, Alexa, Bloglines and Links - it's not clear where the Links metric comes from. Of course, knowing that Alexa numbers can be very skewed considering that they're based on statistics gathered by an Internet Explorer toolbar, it's probably not reasonable to consider the Blog Juice Calculator to be the final word in terms of ranking blogs. In fact, Technorati is probably the most widely accepted authority in that regard. But it's fun to play with, and you get this cool little badge for your site, if you happen to get a ranking that you're not too embarrassed to publicize.

Filed under: Internet, Video, Web services, Yahoo!

MySpace Videos surpasses YouTube

MySpace Videos vs. YouTubeSiliconBeat is reporting that, according to comScore Media Metrix, YouTube has been surpassed in traffic by MySpace Videos, whose traffic doubled in July. This seems to be in contradiction with Alexa, which has YouTube continuing to climb above MySpace. According to comScore, YouTube had 16 million visitors in July--a 20% increase over July--compared to MySpace Videos' 20 million. Required reading to understand these conflicting numbers is SiliconBeat's Web Stats Are Broken. comScore puts MySpace second only to Yahoo! Video, which it says had 21.1 million visitors in July, exceeding YouTube's growth with a 28% increase over June.

Filed under: Web services, Yahoo!, Social Software

del.icio.us traffic tanking/rocking

del.icio.us trafficThere's been some contention over del.icio.us' traffic numbers lately, with TechCrunch's Michael Arrington pointing out that, according to Alexa, the social bookmarking site's traffic peaked in April and "by some measures they've tanked completely" since then. I'm a huge fan of del.icio.us, so some recent numbers from Hitwise are the kind that I like better. Hitwise says that del.icio.us is going strong, and since January its traffic has more than doubled. TechCrunch's Marshall Kirkpatrick underscores the real issue here: "Traffic numbers are maddeningly difficult to nail down, it's an issue that's rarely discussed but is a real problem." It just goes to show, you shouldn't rely on stats from just one source, and you should be prepared to flip a coin.

Filed under: Video, Web services, Social Software

YouTube outpaces MySpace

YouTube vs. MySpaceI knew YouTube was exploding with popularity, but this I didn't expect: According to Alexa, YouTube surpassed uber-social-networking portal MySpace in June in terms of market share. While MySpace still reigns supreme in terms of pageviews and traffic rank, YouTube's reach--i.e. the number of internet users per million that visit a site--is now at 3.9% compared to MySpace's 3.35%. MySpace's growth continues--eight percent in the last three months--but it has been far outpaced by YouTube's 135%. If you like looking at pretty charts, Alexaholic can hook you up, or you can take a look at the raw numbers for YouTube and MySpace on Alexa.

Filed under: Web services, Google, Microsoft

Amazon dumping Google for Microsoft

A9 Powered by Windows LiveSearch Engine Lowdown is reporting that Amazon appears to be dumping Google in favor of partnerships with Microsoft. In particular, Amazon's A9 search engine now draws results from Microsoft's Live.com, and Amazon subsidiary Alexa is doing the same. A9 and Alexa search results now sport a "Powered by Windows Live" badge. I'm most surprised by the A9 switch, since it has been powered by Google since its debut two years ago. There has been no official release from Amazon concerning the switch.

[Via Slashdot]

Filed under: Web services

Alexaholic: A better interface for Alexa charts

AlexaholicAlexaholic "blends Alexa traffic charts with a lightweight ajax-enhanced interface to satisfy hard-core Alexa traffic junkies." What's that mean? It means you can check out Alexa traffic charts with a lot less clutter and a much more responsive interface than you get at Alexa.com. It also has a JavaScript snippet that you can add to your web site to show live charts for any web site(s). Wicked cool.

[Via TechCrunch]

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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