I'd say that Alexa's good for comparing Web sites on a relative basis, but that it's not good for hard numbers. Also, as others have mentioned, their methodology allows for some questioning. According to comScore, which includes a Community/Religion category in their Key Measures report, the top 10 religion sites in December 2007 were * Beliefnet Network * Salem Web Network * CHRISTIANBOOK.COM * About.com Religion * LDS.ORG * THEINTERVIEWWITHGOD.COM * CHRISTIANITYTODAY.COM * CHRISTIANET.COM * CSMONITOR.COM * GOSPELCOM.NET That list includes many non-community sites, so I'd consider it an OK approach to looking at religion-oriented publishers online. Turning to Nielsen//NetRatings, AdRelevance doesn't offer a similar "genre," but you could check individual sites' ad impressions. Both services are quite expensive and outside the budgets of most individuals -- and they raise their own methodology questions -- but they're where I'd turn for data. Heath On Feb 5, 2008 10:05 AM, Eric Goldman <egoldman@gmail.com> wrote:
It's my understanding that Alexa is heavily skewed towards measuring web browsing by marketing folks because they are the main people who have installed the Alexa client.
The Google PageRank displayed via the Google toolbar is notoriously slow to update, which makes it typically out-of-date.