The Boxxet Blog

Make Bad Business Decisions with Alexa

February 19th, 2007 You Mon Tsang

This is an installment of the ongoing “Metrics Series.”

Like many other folks, I think Alexa data is just plain wrong. 

When I compare Boxxet’s numbers (using two totally different methods) to Alexa’s numbers, there is absolutely NO correlation.  As many others have reported, Alexa is heavily skewed with tech users and it shows. One quick example, Boxxet’s most recent biggest day, according to Alexa, was our launch date (Jan 16, 2007).   Yes, we were pleased with that day, and we got lots of attention from the tech bloggers.  However, Jan 16 generated only 1/3 the visits of our actual best day (Feb 12).  And Alexa reports Feb 12 to be 1/7 of Jan 16.  Alexa is off by 21x.

Despite my frustration of our incorrect Alexa numbers, and the near-daily exasperation I have with the many people who rely on it to make snap judgements (including me in the past), I chose not to blog about it.   Also, there may nothing better out there and I do like Amazon.

But this weekend, I saw that Alexa had an upgrade to their service and in their blog announcement, they said:

I expect that this new traffic data will be particularly useful to potential advertisers. It will help to size up an audience before making an ad buy.

Until now, I wasn’t sure why Alexa was doing what it was doing.  I figure it was some sort of giving back to the community.  But with this statement, Alexa sees itself has a useful business tool.  PLEASE STOP, YOU ARE NOT!  

Bad data is more than an inconvenience, it can be downright hurtful to a business.  Great web sites may be shut out of advertising, business deals may never happen because a company did not pass a fictional Alexa test, potential employees may choose not to join a company b/c of its Alexa numbers, adversaries may aim their resources at the wrong competitors.  

Amazon/Alexa, you are encouraging people to make business decisions using your very suspect data.  I believe you have the resources to make Alexa site traffic numbers great.  Please please do so.

Entry Filed under: Metrics Series