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."