4 Comments

Matt Cutts Says Alexa Data Is Skewed

May 17, 2006
by

Dear Matt,

I’ll keep this short and to the point. You say Alexa data is suspect and skewed to webmasters who have the install.

I agree.

So when are we going to have an Alexa-type system from Google? I wrote about this back in February of 2006 in a piece called ‘Google Drops The Ball On Traffic Data Tools Like Alexa‘.

Imagine if Google put out a tool similar to Alexa traffic rankings? Why don’t we have this already? With as many Google toolbar installations as they have (anyone know how many?), and thier use of pagerank, they could build an ultra-uber traffic detail tool in no time flat.

I bet you could get a programmer over there to whip something up in a week or less. It’s not rocket science right? The data is there, you just need to output it. Bing, bang, boom.

A tool of this nature brought to us by Google will solve many problems for webmasters and stat geeks like me. For example:

1. It would eliminate the “alexa is cool, but hardly anyone has alexa toolbar installed so the data is skewed” argument. I don’t know how many Google toolbars are installed, but I’m guessing it’s millions upon millions way more than Alexa has installed. Therefore the data would qualified… better. Not perfect, but at least closer.

2. It gives everybody a way to look at the big picture of traffic on the Internets.

3. So you want to advertise on a site that says they do 1 million page views a month? Go ahead and check them out on Google and see if what they say matches up.

So? Let’s have it then! C’mon.

Filed under: Search Engine Marketing
  • Jonathan (Trust)

    Yeah, I can't take anybody too seriously anytime they bring up their Alexa numbers. I don't think they'll ever put out what you want from Google because of the same way webmasters use Alexa now. They want people to link naturally and to build their sites for people not based on some webmaster toolbar data.

  • http://www.revenews.com/jimmydaniels/ Jimmy Daniels

    Google wouldn't even have to use the toolbar, since they are the site actually getting all of the searches, so the only way to skew it would be to do the searches yourself, and they could filter out the extra hits by looking at ip addresses, etc.

    The Alexa data for some of my sites are spot on, if you just compare the numbers to my traffic numbers.

  • http://www.schaafco.com Brook Schaaf

    Google is not known for revealing this kind of information.

  • http://www.wilsonreport.com david wilson

    Jim
    As a related point, I was shocked at SES NY when MSN admitted that they use data from the Microsoft toolbar as part of their rankings algorithm. Think of the possibilities that opens up for some enterprising site owners!