Alexa, and Amiga vs. MorphOS

[MarkTime]

OK, I ran across alexa.com which is a site that publishes rankings for web sites.

The web site traffic rankings are based on users who use the Alexa toolbar.  This is somewhat problematic for Amiga sites, as the Alexa toolbar is only available for windows and with Internet explorer.

While sampling is perfectly fine, the sampling may not be correct across an international community if alexa adoption is skewed by region.

So, with all those obvious problems aside, WHO RUNS THE MOST POPULAR AMIGA WEBSITE.

WELL AMIGA.ORG of course!!!!  Woo hoo, amiga.org rocks.

So without further ado.....Alexa's rankings, 3 month traffic report (lower number is better):

Amiga.org 157,762
Amiga.com 180,643
AmigaWorld.NET 370,017
Amiga-news.de 1,078,075
ANN.LU over 3,641,889

Obviously, the european sites are getting killed by a lower adoption rate for Alexa toolbar or IE...or a higher retention rate for native amiga browsers???

In any event, I cannot imagine ann.lu really doing so poorly....

interesting though...

now....I would list some morphos sites, but I couldn't find any that had any ranking at all :-(

now just for kicks:

microsoft.com :  8
apple.com: 175
atari.com: 114, 647

remember atari.com is now a website for the atari games division of hasbro, or some game company.....

[MarkTime]

more numbers:

the company I work for now: 93,775
the company my brother founded: 31,886
my former employer's static site: about 139k...

lol, well this could go on forever: uhmmm

macworld.com 8,692
but a personal fave of mine, xlr8yourmac.com is only:
102,611

ok I'll stop.....

[MarkTime]

speaking only about the sites, where I know what the hits are....the finding seem very on target.

still there would be some skew, and maybe more so in the amiga world and its special tendencies.

still I'm not surprised to see the morphOS sites not registering even a blip, and amigazone not registering a blip....

and czech amiga news, being ranked close to amiga-news.de....the big surprise to me, is ann.lu...but while I think alexa is off a bit on that one, I have also revised my overall estimate of thats site traffic downwards...I don't think alexa is completely wrong, based on its other accurate predictions.

The other thing is, its good to be ranked high on search engines...as amiga.org and amiga.com are.....and its good to have spikes of high activity to help your average...as amiga.com, amiga.org, and amigaworld.net clearly do.......

I think its non scientific and clearly not exact, and maybe some real problems with some of the numbers, but....still I don't think its completely off and probably the best guess I've seen yet...anyone else have better numbers?  I think it would be an interesting post if you do....

thanks

[MarkTime]

a LAWD

ok, I can't help but tell on myself.

I was at alexa site again...and it is a amazon.com company, powered by google...

but anyway, customers who visited amiga.com also visited these other sites:

snofalls.com

What??? turns out its a credit union in Snoqualmie Washington....they must have the alexa toolbar installed over at Amiga, Inc.

lmao

[MarkTime]

ahh infograemes, I remember that now...couldn't be bothered to actually load the site, wouldn't want to help their stats you know....

though I don't have Alexa.....or have any idea why
someone would use its toolbar over other ones...
Alexas is the number one source around the world
for independent stats about web site traffic.

They are the largest provider of this kind of service...
though they admit to possible skewing by region
and windows only status of their tools....

still noone else is doing it better....Alexa was founded
by the same people who did amazon.com, and they
have over 200 terabytes of info in their archive...
which btw, they donate all of this to the internet archive for preserving the everychanging internet, in its historical context.

Heck, maybe even these words will be saved.
And someday discovered a hundred million years
from now by an historian.

WOW, good thing I am wearing clean underwear.

[MarkTime]

I took a look at amigasource the other day, good to see a new link directory...

all I'm going to say about cucug's AWD, is that I'll remember it fondly...

good to see a new link directory, I remember fondly seeing new links added everyday, and how exciting it was to see the visible proof of constant activity in this very much 'alive' community.

which reminds me...
Remember all the 'amiga is dead' worries....it was a constant theme a few years ago....many many a post was an 'amiga is dead' post as members left the community, always tryign to take as many with them as they could.

It's wonderful to see the community on a growth phase (almost) again....even without the actual growth, very few people proclaiming the platform 'dead' anymore....that is quite pleasant.

[MarkTime]

UGH, if they didn't send data, there would be no statistics.

Alexa is about the only publicly available source for determining the relative popularity of websites...precisely because it does send the data back.

sure, ok, as an individual user, some people may not wish to use it, but as someone observing the popularity of websites, its a useful tool, and important to put things in the historical context, if one is to preserve information about the internet as it once existed.  Certainly most websites will not provide this information, and even if they would, trying to collect it in some kind of voluntary manner is impossible just from a logistics perspective....

Alexa is useful for web site traffic stats at a very high level, useful for internet historians...whether it is useful from the perspective of the individual user...well, that goes back to the toolbar itself..clearly some like it, some don't.

I don't suggest anyone purposely try to fool the stats by installing Alexa and visiting their fav' websites....

[MarkTime]

This weeks numbers (lower number is better):

Amiga.org: 149,901
Amiga.com: 196,383

The gap widens....

no other amiga site was even in the top 300,000...