People don't question Alexa's reliability not even when the errors are obvious.
<< YouTube has overtaken Google in the popularity stakes following data released on Alexa.com the world’s web ranking specialists.
Alexa.com ranks websites according to their visitor traffic, Web 2.0 video sharing site Youtube.com has now overtaken Google.com as the world's second most visited website.
PRWeb cofirm that after noticing a massive spike in popularity and traffic at video sharing sites such as Youtube.com starting early last year, internet marketer and website traffic expert Kevin Riley decided to see for himself if online video had more than just entertainment value. >>
http://functionpix.com/index.php/article/You_Tube_slams_Google_into_submission/1704/ http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500 |
What do you think is the obvious error? I mean, I agree Alexa data shouldn't be used, and tht probably more people access the Google homepage on a given day than they use the YouTube homepage (and Google owns Youtube, so the phrasing is a bit odd). BUT... what happens if you add up the mere attention time... that is, all the time users look at YouTube videos, including all those embedded on web pages? We leave Google.com pretty quickly after a search – if this refers to just Google.com search, and not e.g. gmail.google.com! – but we may end up watching a YouTube embedded video for minutes. |
The obvious error: YouTube has more page views than Google. No matter how popular is YouTube, Google is the most popular search engine, it's the homepage for many users and has a lot of other services.
Nielsen's data for the US shows that only Google Search has 3.5 more page views than YouTube: http://weblogs.hitwise.com/us-heather-hopkins/2008/02/google_properties_breakdown_by.html |
From a few months back: http://blogoscoped.com/forum/105442.html |
I imagine that this is caused by google.com, google.co.uk, etc. all being tracking seperately.
E.G. on the global Top 500, I see: google.com google.fr google.cl google.com.br etc. (These are all in the top 25) |