Graphs Don't Lie

Chuck sends this graph of Andrew Sullivan's traffic rating, as calculated by Alexa:

Note that December 26, 2003 was when Smitty HQ went live. Check out the steep decline begining on that very date.

Advantage:

Smitty.

Update: "Chuck," who isn't Chuck at all, confirms Madfish Willie's statement that the graph does show declining traffic:

His site was formerly something like the five thousandth most popular site; now it's more like twenty thousandth.

Alexa, I'm guessing, rates all sites, not just blogs; hence, Sears, the US Goverment, MSNBC, etc., are all also on the list, and hence a lowly blogger will be rated fairly low.

I sort of thought that the biggest bloggers got a decent amount of traffic, comparitively, and so big bloggers like Sullivan would still be in the top thousand or so; I guess ol' Smitty is wrong again.

Update: Doug says that Andrew's traffic is as strong as ever, and then cites SiteMeter as evidence for this proposition.

Well. After first picking up my jaw off the desk from seeing what serious traffic looks like, I'm afraid I don't see what the hell Doug
is talking about. I think he's misreading the chart.

Sullivan's traffic has fallen a great deal since the first full month (February) that SiteMeter was recording his traffic until the last full month (May). Doug claims Andrew's traffic is actually "up" from January, but January is just low because he began using this tracker part of the way through the month.

January's traffic seems low (resulting in a rise into February) because Sullivan didn't have SiteMeter installed for the entire month, unless you assume, without evidence, that he began SiteMeter on January 1. The reason January's traffic is low is the same reason June's is-- it's not a complete month of traffic, but only some fraction of a montn.

Update: Okay, I started December 2003, not December 2004.

posted by Ace at 05:51 PM

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