Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Joel,

One of the things I did notice (and experience a lot) is the slow load times from the Alexa rankings for SuN. That is a common occurance for me, and I use a dual-core processor, plenty of RAM, high-speed access, the whole yada yada.

I know the internet is a vast collection of vacuum tubes and all, but what do your IT folks say about load times and server capacity? Many of the posts tend to get hung up upon submission, and I have to cut and paste them, restart the site, log back in, and try again. Is this just me?

I had some issues with load time a while back but seems a little better lately.

Alexa.... overblown stats blowhole. 

Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users. The information is sorted, sifted, anonymized, counted, and computed, until, finally, we get the traffic rankings shown in the Alexa service. The process is relatively complex, but if you have a need to know, please read on.

yada yada yada.......

Perhaps the StartUpNation universe isn`t shrinking.... it could be that the universe of Alexa toolbar users is shrinking.  I know I don`t have no stinkin Alexa toolbar on my web browser....  so according to Alexa... I don`t count.  Bite me Alexa.

BrandAlchemy.... I thought you were supposed to be a smart guy.

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Pokerman It`s not about what you can do... it`s about what you will do! Amateur Poker League Software - Drive Traffic - Add 100,000 Songs to your website - Music Catalog

Alexa Disclaimer

Some Important Disclaimers

The traffic data are based on the set of toolbars that use Alexa data, which may not be a representative sample of the global Internet population. Known biases include (but are likely not limited to) the following:

• Our users are disproportionately likely to visit sites that are featured on alexa.com such as amazon.com and archive.org, and traffic to these sites may be overcounted.
• The extent to which our sample may overcount or undercount users of the various browsers is unknown. Alexa`s sample includes users of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Mozilla browsers. The AOL/Netscape and Opera browser is not supported, which means that sites operated by these companies may be undercounted.
• The extent to which our sample may overcount or undercount users of various operating systems is unknown. Alexa sample includes toolbars built for Windows, Macintosh and Linux.
• The rate of adoption of Alexa software in different parts of the world may vary widely due to advertising locality, language, and other geographic and cultural factors. For example, to some extent the prominence of Chinese sites among our top-ranked sites reflects known high rates of general Internet usage in China, but there may also be a disproportionate number of Chinese Alexa users.
• In some cases traffic data may also be adversely affected by our "site" definitions. With tens of millions of hosts on the Internet, our automated procedures for determining which hosts are serving the "same" content may be incorrect and/or out-of-date. Similarly, the determinations of domains and home pages may not always be accurate. When these determinations change (as they do periodically), there may be sudden artificial changes in the Alexa traffic rankings for some sites as a consequence.
• The Alexa Toolbar turns itself off on secure pages (https:). Sites with secure page views will be under-represented in the Alexa traffic data.

In addition to the biases above, the Alexa user base is only a sample of the Internet population, and sites with relatively low traffic will not be accurately ranked by Alexa due to the statistical limitations of the sample. Alexa`s data come from a large sample of several million Alexa Toolbar users; however, this is not large enough to accurately determine the rankings of sites with fewer than roughly 1,000 total monthly visitors. Generally, Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data we receive is not statistically significant. Conversely, the more traffic a site receives (the closer it gets to the number 1 position), the more reliable its Traffic Ranking becomes.

Sheesh.... the above is from the Alexa site.... as a person that spent years overseeing performance measures for Boeing`s Aircraft & Missle Systems Division, if someone brought me data with this many disclaimers.  I`d ask them why they were wasting my time and then throw them out of my office.

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Pokerman It`s not about what you can do... it`s about what you will do! Amateur Poker League Software - Drive Traffic - Add 100,000 Songs to your website - Music Catalog

How`d we go from how to recreate the SuN environment to wondering whether or not SuN will exist tomorrow? :-)

doesnt  every  thread   evolve  into something  a  bit different  than  what  it initially  starts  of  as???

 

Michael T.... just  for fun.....

 

hmmmmm...... it seems to me that to recreate something that doesn`t exist is a lot easier than recreating something that does exist.  The first requires absolutely no effort at all and what`s the point in the latter.

or should we go back to discussing the lemonade stand? 

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Pokerman It`s not about what you can do... it`s about what you will do! Amateur Poker League Software - Drive Traffic - Add 100,000 Songs to your website - Music Catalog

It`s a bit odd that (a) Alexa reflects the exact same top 1000 stats as other web stat providers, yet (b) people whose sites show decline on it seem to believe that it sucks.

If SuN wants to pay for ComScore or other stat engines, which they may, maybe they`ll get better info for their rate sheets.

Anyway, it is what it is, plus it`s free, so what do you guys expect? A 19% decline for SuN is consistent across many stat engines, so I don`t think this is an isolated example.

As for being a smart guy, I don`t recall ever saying that, but I got in Mensa somehow. Must have been an Alexa fluke as well.

Hi everyone!  I just wanted to make my first post.  I`m new to these forums, but they seem to be better than normal!  I`m excited to read over all of your info.  Ok.   I`ll see everyone later.........

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Amir Khan - http://www.mysmallbiztips.com | Free Small Business Blog and Resource

Welcome Amir!!

I see from your profile that you`re in Detroit. Maybe you can make it to the networking meeting we`re having this coming Tuesday evening?

I look forward to meeting you.

Joel