5 Ways to Get Your CEO/CMO/VP of Marketing to Stop Talking About Alexa
Every time I hear some new stat about Alexa, it makes me want to stab myself in the eye. The only thing worse is to hear a client confidently quote their statistics.

IMO, if enough of us stop acknowledging Alexa, maybe it will go away.

First of all, I’m telling Noah about the flood when I say that the data is skewed beyond recognition. If one portion of the target market is using Alexa’s toolbar, then their data completely alienates the other 99.9999999999% of the population who realize that the toolbar has little to no value to the user as compared to other browser companion applications. Okay, maybe now I’M exaggerating numbers a bit, but no credible statistician would risk his/her reputation on Alexa figures. So why does Alexa continue to get any traction?

Simple. Because every once in a while, a CEO, CMO or VP of Marketing learns about Alexa and turns to their Online Marketing Manager to ask, “Why is [insert competitor Web site here] above us in Alexa’s rank?”

Below are 5 ways to reply to questions about Alexa:

1. “I actually started working on our Alexa ranking a few months ago until I read about how flawed their data is. Alexa admits that their data is far from perfect, and does not seem to have anything in the pipeline that suggests they plan to improve their credibility problem.”

2. “The sample actually only measures Reach and Page Views, which does not dictate site satisfaction. For example, according to Alexa, YouTube has a higher ranking than Google. Obviously, no one believes that YouTube is more popular than Google. However; Google’s success metric is exiting their site, and YouTube is concerned with users watching video after video. That means Traffic Rank is not only flawed from a data collection standpoint, but their methodology for goal measurement is also inaccurate.

3. “I was going to start that process, but I couldn’t find any credible articles showing that an increase in Alexa ranking attributed an increase in order, leads or revenue.”

4. “We can be above our competitor very easily. I’ll just need an annual online budget earmark of about $100,000 to market to SEOs, Web & Software Developers, and Gamers. They make up a disproportionate amount of Alexa’s audience, regardless if they are our audience.

5. “Actually, for around $50,000, we can get some data that actually means something with a HitWise subscription. Would it interest you to know how we match up to all of our competitors, where our traffic lives and breathes, what publications they read, etc?”

Unless something remarkable occurs, this is the last time I plan to give any time to Alexa. I beg of you to do the same.

Labels: Alexa, Traffic Rank, Web site performance

Jeremy | permalink | +marktd |

 
Amazon Files Lawsuit on Statsaholic
It’s no secret that I believe Alexa is flawed at its core. However, that doesn’t change my disappointment that Alexa (hence Amazon) has chosen to sue one of their biggest fans.

Statsaholic (formerly Alexaholic) truly believes that the data is useful. Since I have access to 3rd party research and a company to pay for it, I have zero use for Alexa data. The only “endorsement” that I will give is that if you can’t afford a 3^rd party research tool, Alexa is better than nothing.

This isn’t about whether Alexa’s data is any good or not. It’s about why a company with an adoring fan would choose to slap them right in the face: Here’s the glowing endorsement that Ron Hornbaker provides for them:

1. Alexa is currently the best source for free and public comparative Web user traffic data.
2. Newbies with the Alexa Toolbar are not the only source of data. Firefox users with Craig Raw's cool SearchStatus extension should note that their browsing behavior is similarly being phoned-home to Alexa, and included in the statistics you see here.
3. Statistical significance is attainable with only a small subset of the population – ask a pollster or a high school math teacher.
4. Alexa's blazing-fast graph rendering engine absolutely rocks. Think about the mountains of data Alexa is working with on the backend, and all the possible permutations of graph content and size that prevent widespread caching, and I think you'll agree that their engineers brought their A-game to this one.
5. The key is "comparative" traffic data. If you want to know exactly how many page views and visitors your site is getting, get a good webserver log analysis tool. But if you want to quickly compare your site's traffic to your competitors' sites' traffic, Alexa is your friend.

So why did Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon) choose to bite his friend? The only way Statsaholic’s backing could be any stronger is if they included a link to download the Alexa toolbar. Both companies seemed to have a good, symbiotic relationship.

Statsaholic is not affiliated with Alexa.com, but depends on them exclusively for the traffic chart images. Fortunately for me, Alexa is a cool company that has historically been supportive of 3rd-party development like the excellent Alexadex.com. According to this Alexa blog article calling Statsaholic "cool", they apparently approve of my efforts. I hope you like it, too.

Could Statsaholic have been ANY clearer???? And that "cool company" Alexa (according to their blog) didn’t seem to have a problem with it.

Hornbaker admits to changing the name of the site (and the URL—which appears to be wasted at this point) in March to avoid the trademark issue. And that absolutely makes sense from a brand protection standpoint (if these two were competitors). But the site provides other tools than just the Alexa aggregated data…so that seems pretty convenient.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but in my mind, this should have been dealt with more diplomatically. Considering the strong relationship these companies had, how does Bezos treat his enemies?

Labels: Alexa, lawsuit, Statsaholic

Jeremy | permalink | +marktd |