Came across the Google website trends and couldn’t believe my eyes. Yes guys, it’s all in the open now and there no hiding from it and the good old Alexa “highly manipulable and inaccurate” ranking days are over. Or are they?
Alexa, although pretty accurate for very high traffic sites, often showed weird patterns for smaller sites. I personally have access to about 25 sites’ data and from various stat/analytical software I use (ya ok, its Google Analytics). I always knew which site was getting higher uniques, pageviews, contrary to Alexa, which almost always showed incorrect rankings. i guess it must’ve been me, hanging around my favourite “self owned” sites, thus improving their Alexa rankings.
Have been running the same tests with Google Trends for websites and Voila! they’re accurate. It’s just something you expect of Google – precision.
Never really got around to the third tier – sites like Compete.com and Quantcast.com. Now i know I wasn’t the only one who stuck to Alexa! Here’s proof.
I now know where to go for accurate site traffic analysis. It’s like an addictive game where you just can’t stop yourself from comparing sites of different genres, geographic locations, subjects etc. And once you’ve decided to stop, you remember another one and bingo! Google Trends is open on your Firefox again (yeah, I love open source and am sick of the bulky IE).
Advantage Alexa
Having said that, you still can’t get away from Alexa. If you’re used to checking the Alexa ranking of every site you visit (and then semi consciously upgrading or degrading that site in your mind respectively), I bet no matter how inaccurate or manipulable, Alexa will continue to rule people’s toolbars. In my case, it’s Sparky that sits on the lower right hand corner and right now, it’s showing me no ranking for my Blog.
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