Why Good Data Can Be Hard to Find Online

WSJdpatton writes to mention that Carl Bialik has an interesting look at why good data can be hard to find, much less understand, online. He cites a couple of examples, both Google's first-quarter performance numbers and Alexa's revamp of their number-tracking process. "Now Alexa is incorporating other sources of data -- though it says the prior ranking 'wasn't wrong before, but it was different.' Some sites saw big changes in their rankings following Alexa's move: The tech blog TechCrunch said it fell far from its prior position in Drudge Report territory (rarefied air in Web-traffic terms). On Friday afternoon, Drudge Report ranked 545th, compared with TechCrunch's ranking of 1,784th, according to Alexa's new math."

Comments

Re:Alexa? No.

[TubeSteak]

The article and the slashdot story seem to say the same thing - the numbers produced are just numbers out of a hat. They don't represent anything meaningful and indeed can't because the participants are self-selecting and therefore not a random sample of the population. Even with a random, statistically relevant sample size... the saying "lies, damn lies, and statistics" still applies.

The popularity of a site (or a TV show or anything else) cannot be measured by any simple means, if it can be measured at all. Tivo & other DVRs would suggest otherwise.