Be careful when declaring one site the traffic champion over another if you’re basing your conclusion on Alexa data.
While Alexa data can be useful as an indicator, webmasters should remember that the data collected via the Alexa toolbar is limited to those who’ve actually downloaded the toolbar.
And that demographic is, typically, other webmasters.
This point has been illustrated several times over the years, but most recently popped up again when YouTube was shown to attract more visitors than parent company Google.
TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington notes that several tipsters have pointed to Alexa as justification:
We’ve gotten a few “tips” that YouTube has actually grown larger than Google in terms of page views according to Alexa .
This is, of course, complete fiction. And it shows just how useless Alexa has become as a method for measuring web traffic and reach.
While Google gets 100 billion (wow!) monthly page views, YouTube is still bringing just 16 billion (still, wow!).
This has happened before, as mentioned earlier, when online hall monitors declared YouTube a defeater of MySpace, and when Matt Cutts noted that his blog was more popular than Ask.com…which seems anymore like a prophecy rather than a blatant fallacy.
But anyway, just be careful with your Alexa proclamations. While an indicator of what’s hip, Alexa numbers are by no means an indicator of the larger truth.
