Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Accepting that nobody has a great solution (yet) for measuring the comparative popularity and traffic of websites, two of the major players trying to do so are Alexa and Compete.

You can see StartupNation`s snapshot on both right here:

Compete
Alexa

As I said, I don`t necessarily put a great deal of stock in either measurement at this time, relying as they do on what could be argued is unscientific data, but I`m curious to hear about other opinions on the matter - what say ya?


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chuck fuller

I should clarify that nobody has a great way to do this that`s publicly available at this time - if you`ve got a pot of cash, you can of course use the comscores or nielsens of the world.

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chuck fuller

Chuck.

Thanks for sharing the information.

I had not heard of Compete before, so I wanted to see
what you were speaking on. I visited the website and
I`m too clear of the stats.

Myself, I`d prefer the Alexa stats mainly because it informs
you of all the links and really keeps an archive of websites
over the years.

Chuck it`s going to depend on one`s preferance.

Won`t Be Denied!
C.F. Jackson

 

 

This is not the real question.

The real question is ... does your popularity matter?

One can easily argue that the metrics they`re using to gauge one site against another are flawed, but as far as the core issue of whether or not `popularity` matters, I would say it does to the extent that you need to benchmark your performance against those businesses you see as your main legitimate competition.

Maybe not a factor for absolutely everyone when it comes to website performance, but a factor for many who rely heavily on that presence as either an integral part of their business or as the primary driver of their success.


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chuck fuller

Sorry Chuck - I am just so skeptical about judging anything by popularity after The Big Digg Rig. I think if business owners knew how people can cheat the system and, well, buy love essentially ...

I think you should worry about your own sales and not just your website`s popularity. The other guy may be more popular, but you might be converting more of your traffic to sales. Popularity is a tricky thing to measure and doesn`t entirely give you the big picture.

Spot on, and I`d never say this is the be all end all of how you measure your website, company or anything else - but just because you don`t do that doesn`t mean that website performance can`t be a data point you use at some point.

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chuck fuller