In Defence of Alexa: 10 'Lies' of John Chow

Triumphant Web guru, John Chow, coming out of a bumper 'Digg-effect' harvest week, has taken Alexa Ranking tool bar to the cleaners, calling it 'worthless'. On the contrary, Alexa parades 10 reasons for being one of the greatest utility index tool in the hands of webmetricians world-wide.

From the mouth of John, if you can read between the lines, you would see from his 'ramblings' that Alexa has indeed been of tremendous index tool in the hands of this 8-year, foremost pace-setter, mentor and web guru (...he has become my mentor for the last two weeks, I go for 'invaluable lectures' on his personal blog everyday of the last 14 days).

The first line of that blog post was actually the FIRST reason for Alexa's great worth: "...a tool that many webmasters and advertisers used..."

SECOND Reason: Alexa with millions of her toolbars installed by users is undisputably one of the largest Web crawls in recent technological history.

THIRD Reason: Alexa results are only approximate trends of traffic patterns which even many internet giants like Kevin Rose, John Chow and others who have been meritoriously mentioned in the Top Ten Movers and Shakers Sites as "moving up... in the traffic rankings, as measured by the change in the number of users visiting the site(s)", and have cupiously used this in buttressing facts of correct traffic trends.

FOURTH Reason: The traffic surge of a "FEW DAYS" that made John Chow's ramblings to outstrip AnandTech cannot satisfactorily and sufficiently displace the stable and reliable "three-month" record of AnandTech, which Alexa uses as her standard index, and has reliably advised all users to use, as minimum average for correct comparisons, as compared to transient results of a 'few days'.

FIFTH Reason: Alexa is transparently user-driven and that makes it democratic. It's a big aspersion, cast on her reputation by our darling Mogul when he wrote that "...You can even do it all by yourself by refreshing your site over and over again. Get a dozen friends to do it and you’re break into top 20,000 easily..." The Tech Zone's 23,150 rank obviously did not arrive at that figure by a few friends sitting down to connive and contrive with Alexa tool bar.

SIXTH Reason: To impute 'worthlessness' to Alexa ranking and tool bar is tantamont to surrendering to the articulate but emotionally partisan views of Forever Geek when it accused Digg's top users some six months ago of undemocratic friends-manipulating and gang-promoting, to the front page. Every democracy has its flaws, but such flaws can only be corrected or resolved by democratic means, not by a singular condemnation or commendation of an aggrieved or favored party.

SEVENTH Reason: To trumpetize the 'worthlessness' of Alexa would be to also dispute the statistical data of Sitemeter which John buttressed his arguement with. Alexa rankings does not depart from traditional counters on many websites. Alexa trends results are complimentary to the overall reports by web counters on our sites. For example, our first 30 days report shows a positive correlation between our Alexa rankings and our sitemeter report. We leapt from less than 10 visitors per day to 190 peak just as our Alexa ranking 'jumped' from 5.8 million to 1.5million. We have since crossed the 250 daily visitors mark, and our Alexa rank has correspondingly climbed to 1.09 million. The same can be said of two month-old Charl Norman's Basement Guru from 1.2million to the present 662,000 because of the spin-offs from John's guru effect. Can we then conclude that Charl's friends sat down and used Alexa tool bar to promote his site to 662,000 from nowhere in two weeks?

EIGHT Reason: What Alexa rankings 'told' us about the scenario painted graphically for us by John is that, John would have to consistently sustain the 'tons of traffic' that made his ramblings outstrip AnandTech for the next "three months" before Alexa could 'pronounce' John Chow (dot) com as a 'more important site' than, and over AnandTech.

NINTH Reason: AnandTech remains in her 1,552 aggregate Alexa rank, while the aggregate Alexa rank for ramblings significantly improved to 15,517 from 27,840. A far cry below AnandTech's relative importance, as measured by 'worthless' Alexa tool bar.

TENTH Reason: If Alexa were 'worthless', our worthy and beloved web giant would not have confirmed the 'tonnage' traffic (measured by Alexa and acknowledged by Sitemeter) with a positive correlation in an Adsense income of $352.94 in 13 days! John Chow is a worthy mentor to me, that is why he showed an example of charity by devoting that token income to his church and his foundation. But wait to see that, his 'ramblings' would soon cross over from token into the big league- the Google Whores, as he called them. It is tremendous to move from 6th postion to 5th on Alexa Movers and Shakers in one week! Let us appreciate and not denigrate the inestimable service of Alexa, just as we cannot despise the invaluable serbvice of darling Digg. We are webmerictians and not web magicians!