Lynn at The Standard has posted that it’s possible to manipulate the Alexa Stats.
It’s worth a read.
After 3 weeks, Alexa now shows a traffic rank of 192k and nz266 rank. As far as I’m aware there have been no other readers starting to use this who read The Standard. It is possible, but the rapid decrease started when I started to do my usual operations with Alexa running after months of comparative stability. The average page views per person moved from a 3 month average of 2.9 to a week average of 10. This has to almost entirely be due to my activities.
It appears to me, as if a single person using this can significantly change the NZ traffic ranks at Alexa. They would also change rankings that use this as a factor. Looks like a good technique to rort the ranking systems, especially for a admin of a site who spends a lot of time on their own site.
I’m fairly happy with Alexa at present. I don’t think there is much deliberate manipulation (yes, I know I’m at 19 on the HD rankings, and I have no idea why) because you can see the blogs that put in the work to get the traffic, either by quality or other means rising to the top.
More thoughts on this topic floating around, but it’s time for bed right now. If anyone has any ideas on how to rank blogs, I’m interested to hear any submissions. I have a few irons in the fire, and I may end up publishing some quite interesting (or not) stuff in future with regards to blogging patterns, and I’m not averse to publishing more than one metric.
Something should go here, maybe later. 
2 responses to “Manipulating the Stats”
Unless you’re trying to make money from advertising (and wouldn’t it be good to be paid for having fun?) rankings don’t mean much.
Kiwiblog is the only one in NZ with significant traffic which recognises the quality and quantity of his posts.
It might be flattering to be higher up the rankings but I don’t think it means much.
Bill Bennet has started ranking for just wordpress blogs: http://billbennettnz.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/new-zealands-top-wordpresscom-sites/#comments
He puts me at number one but Poneke and Dim Post at 2 and 3 get more comments than I do, and given the quality of most of them, that means more than where they’re ranked.
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