Polemicists occasionally recruit “facts” in support of their cause, and I find it restful to examine those off in a quiet corner while the screeching continues.

A case in point is the ongoing discussion about Daily Kos, and the supposed “fact”, in a diary linked to below that web traffic there is not growing and is less than that enjoyed by Freerepublic.

For those who don’t want to read the extended box and supporting data, here’s the “shorter” version.

Web traffic comparisons based, as these are, on data from Alexa are suspect at best.  Based on number of participants, not visitors, Daily Kos grew from the beginning of the year to just about the time of the pie fight.

You may now resume your regularly scheduled jousting.
Still here?  Ok, returning to the diary Why DailyKos isn’t worth …, eodell says the following.

DailyKos, just for the sake of perspective, gets half to one-third the traffic of FreeRepublic.com. And dKos’ traffic is amazingly stable. Aside from some small growth in the aftermath of the presidential elections, it’s not growing.

I looked at the cited link, saw the numbers matched what was said, but I didn’t believe them.  I didn’t believe them because I’ve been tracking participation at Daily Kos since last fall (the day of the election if you must know), and I’ve seen the growth in participation there this year, so large I’ve proposed it as the root of the “problem” that so many people seem to be able to find there currently.

But back to web traffic.  I have studiously ignored that subject until now, so if what I’m about to tell you is not news, my apologies, but it was new to me.

Plainly put, the numbers that eodell relied on aren’t valid.  He gets his numbers from Alexa.  Alexa gets their numbers from the Alexa Toolbar, available from Alexa for Internet Explorer on PCs only.  The Alexa Toolbar installed base has been characterised as “a very limited audience sample, strongly slanted to represent … online marketing specialists, web site owners, webmasters”.  Given the recent increase in other browsers (currently 48% at Daily Kos are non IE according to SiteMeter) and the limited and skewed installed base of Alexa data providers, Alexa simply can’t provide good numbers for either the site to site comparison or site growth over time.

Eodell could have said that the DK traffic coming from people using internet explorer equipped with the Alexa toolbar has been stable and isn’t growing, and is 1/2 to 1/3 of that same sort of traffic to FR.  Not such a strong statement, is it?

For anyone interested in learning more about comparing web “status” of various sites, I recommend this article: PACmeter – Popularity, Authority, Credibility Online: How To Measure Them?, wherein you can find this prononouncement with respect to Alexa measurements: “These lopsided and absurdly inaccurate traffic rankings in themselves are enough to warrant a chuckle”.

Other ways to compare web sites:

Number of inbound google links:  DK: 64700, FR: 23100, BMT: 316
Google PageRank: DK: 7, FR: 7, BMT: 5
Technorati link ranking: DK: 3, FR >100, BMT >100 (Instapundit: 2 by the way)

I hope for Boomantribune continued  growth to a good and sustainable size.  For Daily Kos, perseverance through troubled times.  And for everyone, data you understand and believe in.

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