Alexa’s pageview counting is funky
Hans Kullin on social networking sites and Alexa pageviews.
There are a lot of problems with looking at Alexa pageview numbers for social networking sites (or any site). Alexa has a funky way of measuring pageviews (looking at accessed unique URL:s instead of counting pageviews). In addition Alexa has self-selection bias which seems to an advantage to English sites as well as sites popular among geeks.
I wouldn’t use Alexa for other data than the ranking. I.e. Site X seems to be larger/smaller than Site Y. But still discount the numbers for geek sites when comparing them with non-geek sites.
LunarStorm in Sweden have had increased competition from primarily Playahead, but the drop seems to be more of an Alexa measuring issue than reality.
tags: Alexa, web analytics