Hi Jarosław, When i worked in local media I could compare our actual website numbers to what Alexa reported. I describe it as woefully inaccurate. That said, it's a popular free tool and it is used a fair amount in publications, so it has that going for it. I think this reflects availability more than reliability. So whether to use it depends on how important the accuracy of that number is for your argument. If you want to understand where their numbers come from, they explain it here: "Alexa's traffic estimates are based on data from our global traffic panel, which is a sample of millions of Internet users using one of over 25,000 different browser extensions. In addition, we gather much of our traffic data from direct sources in the form of sites that have chosen to install the Alexa script on their site and certify their metrics. However, site owners can always choose to keep their certified metrics private. Our global traffic rank is a measure of how a website is doing relative to all other sites on the web over the past 3 months. The rank is calculated using a proprietary methodology that combines a site's estimated average of daily unique visitors and its estimated number of pageviews over the past 3 months. We provide a similar country-specific ranking, which is a measurement of how a website ranks in a particular country relative to other sites over the past month." That's from http://www.alexa.com/about Here's a hack I use when I can: if the website has a media kit you can often get traffic numbers from those. Just google: website name Year mediakit .PDF (that's what usually works for me). Otherwise, search AdAge for articles relating to the site you're interested in. They often have articles that list web traffic for the bigger sites. Cheers, Stacy On Sep 2, 2014 12:49 AM, "Noha Nagi" <noha.a.nagi@gmail.com> wrote:
For me, I found it mentioned in academic articles. It's probably reliable.
On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 2:52 AM, Jarosław Kopeć <jaroslaw.kopec@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
This is my first e-mail. It's great that there is such a list. I will probably using it extensively in next couple of months ;)
My question relating alexa.com is -- how reliable is this? Anyone used it in a scientific paper as an authoritative source?
2014-09-01 23:59 GMT+02:00 Noha Nagi <noha.a.nagi@gmail.com>:
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 5:36 PM, Anthony Nadler <amnadler@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm wondering where other researchers go to find measures of particular websites' traffic as well as web traffic rankings for certain categories (i.e. news, etc)? Any sites that keep good historical records of this data?
I'm also wondering if anyone knows of an article or other source that offers a good overview for thinking about the complexities of measuring and ranking web traffic and speaks to the pros and cons of different techniques? I'm writing about from a humanistic background with a desire to touch upon rankings data in a considered way.
-- Anthony Nadler Assistant Professor of Media and Communication Studies Ursinus College _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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-- *Noha A.Nagi* _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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-- Jarosław Kopeć http://surfing.wymiarywiedzy.pl
-- *Noha A.Nagi* _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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