How Much Attention Do You Pay To Alexa Stats?

[Lee]

When it comes to sites you are considering doing link trades with, etc do you put much wieght on the stats from places like Alexa, Compete, etc?

I was always under the impression that these types of sites werent that reliable with their stats but was just chatting with a freind on ICQ who was trying to convince me that these are used quite a lot in mainstream to gauge a sites traffic.

Have these types of stats improved over the years so that they actually are more reliable than they used to be or are they just as bad now as they have always been?

Regards,

Lee

[Maryflixxx]

None.

Alexa is pretty much outdated, I'd prefer to see Analytics stats.
To start the conversation, I may check the stats briefly as they'll give me an idea of the level of traffic available.

Alexa can't speak to the quality or the targeting of that traffic.

They also get it wrong on many sites, especially sites that are a mixed bag or sites that are more "network" oriented in that, like QueerClick, they have different parts or micro-sites making up their sites.

[Lee]

They also get it wrong on many sites, especially sites that are a mixed bag or sites that are more "network" oriented in that, like QueerClick, they have different parts or micro-sites making up their sites.

Yeah i was checking out Compete.com earlier and noticed that they had GWW listed as being in San Fransisco, not sure how they managed that as nothing at all to do with GWW is based anywhere on the West Coast LOL

Domain is registered in Florida, just like our corporation and its hosted in Atlanta by NatNet LOL

Regards,

Lee

[Maryflixxx]

And on QueerClick they mush all our demographics into one bunch, ignoring that QueerClick is actually a network of multiple micro-sites on unique domains or subdomains.

So I had one person ask to exclude Japan from a banner campaign as he had looked at us on Alexa which grossly overestimated our Japanese traffic because it mixes Sticky with QueerClick.

I give our advertisers access to stats for the areas of the network that they want to advertise on so they can see who they have access to and make the right decisions accordingly.

I think Alexa lost it's grip when people discovered how much using the Toolbar skewed results and the info about Alexa Spamming/Stuffing hit the public.

M.

[SirGuy]

Other than occasionally checkin' out site stats on Alexa, I don't put a lot of creedence or importance on their reliability. I've found Alexa to have some rather glaring inconsistencies.