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A comment on Ask YC: How do sites like Compete, Alexa collect traffic estimates?. Parent comment

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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