Why do people use Alexa as a benchmark?

Discussion in 'Traffic Analysis' started by slinky, Nov 6, 2006.

  1. #1
    I'm having a bit of a challenge at work and am hoping some of you can provide some assistance. IMHO Alexa is spyware, nothing more and nothing less. The stats it purportedly provides are outrageous and all over the place. What's my challenge? We have a site that has been skyrocketing all the way into the 60,000 range category for the past 5 months. It gets 4,500 unique users... per month. The site has about 6,000 total registrations and maybe 10 concurrent users. There is loads of buzz about this site, especially since it has overtaken a competitor in Alexa.

    Let's talk about the competitor. Over 2 million registrations (relatively meaningless but in comparisons...), they claim to have over 5,000 concurrent users (let's even say only 2,000 for argument's sake), and I don't know their page view count.

    One has to be stupider than Borat to think that these two sites even compare yet there is loads of excitement over this "accomplishment." I have no idea how to account for this, especially since 2 users comprise at least 20% of the traffic and are internal employees who surf.

    So I ask my friends here, what exactly is Alexa useful for and can anyone provide better benchmarks for traffic or some meaningful way to ensure that these non-web savvy individuals don't insist that they are seeing what they claim? I'm sure many of you have run into challenges like this one.
     
    slinky, Nov 6, 2006 IP
  2. britishguy

    britishguy Prominent Member

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    #2
    Yes Alexa is very good at accurately providing daily in-accurate statistics

    Hope that helps with your benchmark survey :)
     
    britishguy, Nov 6, 2006 IP
  3. react

    react Active Member

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    #3
    Alexa is great....





    If you are looking for an advertising benchmark and your dealing with people that don't know better. It's funny one of my sites ranks better, has more uniques, has more incoming natural links than one of my competitors, but they're in the top 100,000 and Im in the top 900,000 lol Remember people have to have the alexa toolbar installed for it to count.
     
    react, Nov 18, 2006 IP