Overlooking Definitions. TechCrunch is Useless?
Mike Arrington says Alexa is useless, because Alexa stats show YouTube is bigger than Google. Here’s the graph to prove two things (click to see full size):
Now, we all have a grudge with Alexa, but I’m going to be rational for a second. He’s comparing the “Page Views” stat of the two sites. Alexa’s page view stats refers to the amount of pages loaded on the internet that day belong to the respective site. Google and it’s own blood, Youtube, are around 3% of daily page loads.
But this means that YouTube has more page loads a day than Google! This can’t be true!
It is true, and I’ll tell you why. YT averages in the high 12’s in page views per user, and Google the low 1’s. You want to compare their popularity? Look at the reach stat. It clearly shows you who’s on top.
Alexa is not useless, it’s just the mildly useless kid that everyone beat up in middle school. Turns out it has some use, and the bullies were… jumping to conclusions. The two things this graph answers: Mike jumped a little on a misconstrued stat and Alexa has some meaning. Some 
TechCrunch is obviously not useless as I question in the title, but the hard edge is showing a little more in their writing. Objective news, plzkthx.
Leave a comment
Glen Allsopp
August 14th, 2007 at 4:49 AM
Because Google uses a lot of Ajax technology; as does youtube for that matter the number of pageviews can never be accurate
Adam McKerlie
August 14th, 2007 at 10:33 AM
I think the main difference is because Google users go to the page and search for a specific thing, generally find it on the first page and then leave. YouTube users search for many videos, watch them and continue watching more. TechCrunch can’t really compare the two since they have different uses.
Freebies
August 14th, 2007 at 3:24 PM
Not only is Alexa useful, but it saved itself from a slow death when it started working with FF recently. It was only a matter of time before somebody came out with a better tool than Alexa that would work with more browsers than just IE.
Alexa could really take some huge strides in becoming a legit stat service if they’d just take the time to develop the program a little.
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