5 ms·

Conclusion: compete.com has absolutely no respectable data, so don't look there.

by spolsky 18y ago

staunch 18y ago
Sorry about the name typo (<pre coffee excuse>). Although the absolute numbers are always wildly inaccurate, Compete tends to be fairly good at viewing the traffic trends for a site. Or does the chart look nothing like your own internal ones?
- TomOfTTB 18y ago
  I'm not even sure that's true anymore. Compete's always low-balled my traffic numbers (at least in comparison to Google Analytics) but I have a fairly small blog so I've always given Compete a pass because I can understand why it would be harder for them to measure a site with only a modest readership. But a couple months back I got linked to by Mathew Ingram and, while Michael Arrington was covering Mr. Ingram's post on Techcrunch he also shot me a link. As you can imagine that generated a huge bump. But Compete actually had my numbers trending down for that month (cut in half in fact) and the month after as well (which was completely contrary to my Analytics readings). So now I don't even have much faith in the site for trending data.
- abstractbill 18y ago
  Compete tends to be fairly good at viewing the traffic trends for a site No it doesn't. Their graphs for Justin.TV traffic aren't even usually the same shape as the real thing.
  - defunkt 18y ago
    Same with GitHub.
    - jim-greer 18y ago
      Same with Kongregate. Alexa is somewhat better. We use Quantcast's tracking pixel so you can see the real numbers.
      - dshah 18y ago
        The shape of the graph for grader.com is pretty close to the real thing (and eerily the same as Stackoverflow.com). http://siteanalytics.compete.com/stackoverflow.com+grader.com/?metric=uv http://siteanalytics.compete.com/stackoverflow.com+grader.co... (Which is surprising. Grader.com is nowhere near as useful).
andrewljohnson 18y ago
Sites like Alexa and Compete provide valuable data - you just need to know how to use it. The number 1 thing you need to remember is that the data is not useful as an absolute measure - it's only good to compare sites. The number 2 thing to know is that if you compare similar sites, the comparisons are more accurate. So if you compare trailbehind.com, everytrail.com, and backpacker.com, the comparison will be a lot more accurate than if you compare cnn.com, stackoverflow.com, and myspace.com. Number 3 is these sites are more useful if you have benchmark data. For example, if you want to know the traffic for a magazine type site, go download their media kit (usually available as a PDF on their site), and it will tell you their traffic. Then you can use this data for understanding Alexa better.
- TomOfTTB 18y ago
  What do you base this theory on? I'm honestly not trying to attack you but there are several posts below (mine included) that indicate what you are saying isn't the case. If you have a factual basis that says we're wrong I'd be interested in hearing it. But in this post you are simply stating absolutes without backing those absolutes up. I guess what I'm asking is "how do you know what you are saying is true?"
  - andrewljohnson 18y ago
    Go to InformationWeek.com, ComputerWorld.com, and ITWeek.com, or pick a few other trade rags that publish a media kit. Download the media kits, see how much traffic these similar sites get, and then see what the error is on Alexa. I think you'll find that the numbers are of the right order of magnitude. You're going to get a pretty clear signal when looking at sites relative to one another, since most of the error will effect the sites the same. And if you have sites that have the same sorts of traffic patterns, then the relative signal should be even clearer. It's true that people gaming the system effect the numbers, but that's not going to distort the numbers enough to make them worthless. You can't use Alexa or similar to see whether one site has 3000 visitors a month and another has 3500. But if one ha 3000 and one has 30000 then you'll see it in the graph.
    - 18y ago

Conclusion: compete.com has absolutely no respectable data, so don't look there.

by spolsky 18y ago

Conclusion: compete.com has absolutely no respectable data, so don't look there.

Sorry about the name typo (<pre coffee excuse>). Although the absolute numbers are always wildly inaccurate, Compete tends to be fairly good at viewing the traffic trends for a site. Or does the chart look nothing like your own internal ones?

TomOfTTB 18y ago
I'm not even sure that's true anymore. Compete's always low-balled my traffic numbers (at least in comparison to Google Analytics) but I have a fairly small blog so I've always given Compete a pass because I can understand why it would be harder for them to measure a site with only a modest readership. But a couple months back I got linked to by Mathew Ingram and, while Michael Arrington was covering Mr. Ingram's post on Techcrunch he also shot me a link. As you can imagine that generated a huge bump. But Compete actually had my numbers trending down for that month (cut in half in fact) and the month after as well (which was completely contrary to my Analytics readings). So now I don't even have much faith in the site for trending data.
abstractbill 18y ago
Compete tends to be fairly good at viewing the traffic trends for a site No it doesn't. Their graphs for Justin.TV traffic aren't even usually the same shape as the real thing.
- defunkt 18y ago
  Same with GitHub.
  - jim-greer 18y ago
    Same with Kongregate. Alexa is somewhat better. We use Quantcast's tracking pixel so you can see the real numbers.
    - dshah 18y ago
      The shape of the graph for grader.com is pretty close to the real thing (and eerily the same as Stackoverflow.com). http://siteanalytics.compete.com/stackoverflow.com+grader.com/?metric=uv http://siteanalytics.compete.com/stackoverflow.com+grader.co... (Which is surprising. Grader.com is nowhere near as useful).

andrewljohnson 18y ago

Sites like Alexa and Compete provide valuable data - you just need to know how to use it. The number 1 thing you need to remember is that the data is not useful as an absolute measure - it's only good to compare sites. The number 2 thing to know is that if you compare similar sites, the comparisons are more accurate. So if you compare trailbehind.com, everytrail.com, and backpacker.com, the comparison will be a lot more accurate than if you compare cnn.com, stackoverflow.com, and myspace.com. Number 3 is these sites are more useful if you have benchmark data. For example, if you want to know the traffic for a magazine type site, go download their media kit (usually available as a PDF on their site), and it will tell you their traffic. Then you can use this data for understanding Alexa better.

TomOfTTB 18y ago
What do you base this theory on? I'm honestly not trying to attack you but there are several posts below (mine included) that indicate what you are saying isn't the case. If you have a factual basis that says we're wrong I'd be interested in hearing it. But in this post you are simply stating absolutes without backing those absolutes up. I guess what I'm asking is "how do you know what you are saying is true?"
- andrewljohnson 18y ago
  Go to InformationWeek.com, ComputerWorld.com, and ITWeek.com, or pick a few other trade rags that publish a media kit. Download the media kits, see how much traffic these similar sites get, and then see what the error is on Alexa. I think you'll find that the numbers are of the right order of magnitude. You're going to get a pretty clear signal when looking at sites relative to one another, since most of the error will effect the sites the same. And if you have sites that have the same sorts of traffic patterns, then the relative signal should be even clearer. It's true that people gaming the system effect the numbers, but that's not going to distort the numbers enough to make them worthless. You can't use Alexa or similar to see whether one site has 3000 visitors a month and another has 3500. But if one ha 3000 and one has 30000 then you'll see it in the graph.
  - 18y ago