Why does anyone look at Alexa when we have Quantcast?
by Sapphire (May 16, 2008)
I just don’t get it. Alexa’s new ranking system is even further off than the old one, and we have Quantcast which does a far better job tracking accurate visitor counts and even sorting out demographics (it’s connected to Neilsen, who does the TV ratings in the US, which is the direction web stats have got to go).
I look at my sites on Alexa. Now, whether you love or hate AwStats, it has to be relatively accurate for two sites on the same server, right? That means I know without a doubt how much traffic my sites are getting relative to each other. And Alexa’s got it all wrong. My most trafficked site has the lowest ranking of all.
Quantcast has it all right. Now, granted, not everyone’s using it and it’s a very opt-in system. But that’s what third-party ad brokers should be using instead of pagerank or Alexa, which only speculate. Quantcast gets hard data, and people who want to sell ads on their site would be well advised to hook up - it’s free, and the results are publicly viewable. Don’t ask me where they get their info on gender, age and income level and all that - I’m still not convinced the Neilsens are really accurate. But it doesn’t matter, because once you have an industry standard, you have a platform for negotiations about ad space.
Posted in Traffic
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