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Alexa data is confusing

Posted Wed, 28 Feb 2007

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 | Link to this post | posted at: 13:23
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5 responses to 'Alexa data is confusing'

Showing last 5 comments... (Click here to view all comments)

Brock wrote at Wed Feb 28 04:00:13 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 wrote at Wed Feb 28 14:05:52 2007...
Alexa has a toolbar that reports back user's browsing habits. I'm pretty sure that's where they get their info.

Ryan wrote at Wed Feb 28 14:06:31 2007...
Dammit, again, I don't finish reading before I reply!

candice wrote at Wed Feb 28 21:54:08 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 wrote at Mon Mar 5 07:28:21 2007...
Regards from Spain. ;)

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