Ask YC: How do sites like Compete, Alexa collect traffic estimates?

Re:Ask YC: How do sites like Compete, Alexa collect traffic ... by ecaron on Thursday May 14, 2009 @12:40PM (#609102)

Compete & Alexa heavily rely on browser toolbars (http://www.compete.com/help/s11) to estimate their data. They work hard to normalize their data, but you can probably imagine that the demographic of people with that kind of toolbar installed is heavily skewed (and some people argue loudly against it: http://venturebeat.com/2007/02/22/traffic-measuring-continue...)

Other sites, like Comscore, use various methods like router-level analysis & client-side monitoring software (like Nielson w/ TVs).

In the end, no method is 100% accurate and the best analysis comes from looking at various sources & taking it all with a grain of salt.

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Re:Ask YC: How do sites like Compete, Alexa collect traffic ... by ashishk on Thursday May 14, 2009 @12:45PM (#609115)

i remember seeing their browser toolbars, i didnt know that was the only source of data.

it seems like collecting data like search engine queries, number of inbound links to the site might also be used. no?

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Re:Ask YC: How do sites like Compete, Alexa collect traffic ... by ecaron on Thursday May 14, 2009 @01:05PM (#609152)

There's no way to them to get that interstitial data without having code analyzed/reporting per-page on the site (either backend Apache-log analysis or something like Google Analytics). Alexa did this for a while with their "embed your site's score", but that was too easily gamed so it was discontinued as a metric source.

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