Alexa, Alexa, Alexa…

www.Alexa.com

Not a week goes by that I do not have someone bring up Alexa reporting and say that is says so and so is getting more traffic than so and as so. People/competitors/consultants refer to Alexa traffic reporting as a justification for some of the services or products they are recommending. For those of you not familiar with Alexa, it is a website traffic measuring service that aims to provide free competitive intelligence to the masses.

My problem with Alexa is that it’s data is far from accurate. I am not going to get int to a rant about the inaccuracies as more than enough people have already exposed these issues.

Here are a few examples:
http://www.thenetfool.com/when-alexa-attacks/
http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/utilities/alexa/
http://www.e-consultancy.com/forum/101280-how-accurate-is-alexa-for-traffic-measurement.html

Why is it inaccurate?
Ok, I lied I’m going to rant.

The short story is that it only tracks web traffic from people who have the Alexa toolbar installed on their browser. Do you have it installed? I don’t and I do not know anyone that does. So anyone that does not have the Alexa toolbar installed will not be counted in the website traffic. Of course if you install the Alexa widget into your site than it can more accurately track your websites traffic.

But why add the widget/tracking to your site? Who cares about what Alexa says? Well Alexa makes it’s traffic data public including the traffic data about your website. So if you do not have the tracking widget installed you will look like you are getting less traffic than a website that has this tracking installed..

So the logic here is; include the Alexa tracking widget or we will shame you by displaying innacurate data about your site. Data that will most likely make it appear that your online efforts are falling short comapred to competitors. The uninformed marketer often sees a reference to Alexa report and gets worried that their online efforts are failing. For this, Alexa, you are doing more harm than good.

Don’t get me wrong Alexa is an entertaining product and if luck is on my side and shows that my sites are getting more traffic than competitors, it puts a smile on my face. But that is as useful as it gets.  I certainly would not build any strategy around Alexa reporting.

Compete.com

Compete
Compete seemed to have started out with the same agenda as Alexa but has morphed into a slightly more useful tool. Sure it’s traffic reporting is still very much an estimate. Currently their sample size is 2 million US Internet users. Unlike Alexa it collects data via toolbars, surveys, Aggregate data from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like AOL* and Comcast* and Applications Service Providers (ASPs) Like web mail*.

So, they are getting a broader mix of internet users in their sample and I would trust Compete.com over Alexa.com but still wouldn’t make any important decision based solely on their reports.

*AOL COMCAST and web mail are examples of ISPs and ASPs  only and are note  necessarily associated with Compete.com

Quantcast

How accurate is Quantcast data? Well, it collects data via a mix of sources similar to Compete.com. Sources include  advertisers, publishers, ISPs and advertising networks. It’s “Media Planner” service is still branded as beta but looks very promising so far.

Professional Competitive Services.
Aside from the services mentioned above there are pay services that can can collect much more targeted information. The three big companies in this space are Comscore, Hitwise and Neilson Netrating. These service are excellent, but very expensive for a small business. Usually in the tens of thousands of dollars per year.  My experience with these services have revealed that they are most useful for major Internet brands and and large business. When it comes to a small website or a local brand for a small to medium sized business, there just isn’t enough data to reveal anything more than what Compete or Quantcast.

Check back for a more detailed comparison of these companies.

What are your experiences with these services? Is there another you would recommend?