Alexa.com
I did the homework assignment using Alexa.com to analyze traffic flow for Dell.com and its top 10 competitors. I thought this was an interesting exercise for me, and something I can definitely make use of now and in the future. One interesting note is that even though Dell is the financial “leader’ of manufacturing computers, it is Apple.com that is actually the “web-traffic” leader.
One complaint I have is that the homework instructions weren’t correct and I played around a lot with the numbers before I finally decided that the instructions had to be wrong and did the math in a way that coincided with the sample calculations that were given since they also made sense. I spent so much time playing with this that I really didn’t have the time left to write a thorough analysis of what I found with my recommendations L.
Although Alexa.com provides useful data I think there are drawbacks to it too:
1) To measure web traffic flow it is required that the Alexa toolbar is installed on client machines so web surfing data can be sent back to the Alexa server. This essentially amounts to “spyware” and with all the negative publicity surrounding this activity I have doubts that “computer savvy” people would install this toolbar (I didn’t). This means that the data being gathered is not really a true gauge of what is going on across the web; just what is going on with a “select group” who either don’t mind or don’t understand that they are essentially being spied upon ;). 2) Alexa is tied to Amazon.com and I wonder what that company is doing with the data being collected? Since Amazon is a major e-commerce portal, I personally doubt they’re providing web traffic info for the benefit of all of us, but more so that there is an agenda that they’ll be using the data for (another reason not to install the toolbar).
One complaint I have is that the homework instructions weren’t correct and I played around a lot with the numbers before I finally decided that the instructions had to be wrong and did the math in a way that coincided with the sample calculations that were given since they also made sense. I spent so much time playing with this that I really didn’t have the time left to write a thorough analysis of what I found with my recommendations L.
Although Alexa.com provides useful data I think there are drawbacks to it too:
1) To measure web traffic flow it is required that the Alexa toolbar is installed on client machines so web surfing data can be sent back to the Alexa server. This essentially amounts to “spyware” and with all the negative publicity surrounding this activity I have doubts that “computer savvy” people would install this toolbar (I didn’t). This means that the data being gathered is not really a true gauge of what is going on across the web; just what is going on with a “select group” who either don’t mind or don’t understand that they are essentially being spied upon ;). 2) Alexa is tied to Amazon.com and I wonder what that company is doing with the data being collected? Since Amazon is a major e-commerce portal, I personally doubt they’re providing web traffic info for the benefit of all of us, but more so that there is an agenda that they’ll be using the data for (another reason not to install the toolbar).
posted by mkelley at
4:26 PM
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