Alexa data is confusing :: semicomplete.com

Wed, 28 Feb 2007

Alexa data is confusing

According to alexa.com:

Traffic Rank for semicomplete.com: 559,376
Rank in Spain: 13,257

Google Analytics believes this to be different. While Analytics doesn't give me traffic rank, it does tell me that the majority of the viewers come from the US and some of Europe (Mostly UK, North East and West US). Not Spain. Analytics watches everyone who comes to semicomplete.com.

I wonder where Alexa is getting it's data from.

Update - Brock pointed out that since pain is smaller than the US, that might account for my extremely-high rank. I left out some data becuase I was being lazy in this post, here it is:

This says that 41% of the viewers come from Spain. Again, Google Analytics disagrees. My only guess at this point is that of those who visit my site, Alexa is able to track spaniards better? Maybe it's some toolbar thing that reports usage data. Brief looking around at alexa.com doesn't provide anything useful.

Googling shows this which has a link to Alexa's explanation. Yep. Toolbar.

Comments: 5 (view comments)
Tags: alexa, data mining, traffic
Permalink: /geekery/alexa-is-confusing
posted at: 16:23

5 responses to 'Alexa data is confusing'

Brock posted at Wed Feb 28 07:00:13 2007...

Maybe it's because there are a lot more people in the US than Spain? You could be #1 in a country of 100 people, but that doesn't mean it'll be your biggest source of incoming traffic.

Ryan posted at Wed Feb 28 17:05:52 2007...

Alexa has a toolbar that reports back user's browsing habits. I'm pretty sure that's where they get their info.

Ryan posted at Wed Feb 28 17:06:31 2007...

Dammit, again, I don't finish reading before I reply!

candice posted at Thu Mar 1 00:54:08 2007...

Alexa's also kinda spyware-y, it's in the kind of autoinstaller stuff. Sometimes it's an agent in the regular logs.

logadmin posted at Mon Mar 5 10:28:21 2007...

Regards from Spain. ;)

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Wed, 28 Feb 2007