ALEXA ACCUSED OF MANIPULATING RANKINGS ANSWERS CRITICS…”WE ARE IMPARTIAL IN RANKING WEBSITES”

Amazon subsidiary says it has not changed methodology…By Leo Hohmann

After nearly three days of silence, a California company that ranks the popularity of Internet websites has responded to charges of bias against watchdog news-media sites.

In an unsigned official statement sent through Facebook, San Francisco-based Alexa Internet Inc., which is a subsidiary of Amazon, said it has not changed its methodology and stands by the accuracy of its rankings.

The response comes after two reports by WND showing that Alexa’s most recent rankings for July through September appeared skewed in favor of websites such as MSNBC, NPR, ThinkProgress and Daily Kos and against well-known watchdog sites such as the Drudge Report, Breitbart News, Fox News and WND.

Alexa’s ranking are important because they are considered one of the few third-party sources of data on website traffic, which can be used by advertisers deciding where to place their ads.

Below is the full text of the statement Alexa sent to WND:

“Thanks for your inquiry. Below is some additional information about how Alexa calculates ranks. We have not recently changed our methodology.

“The Alexa ranks are updated daily. Most Global and Country ranks are based on our panel of toolbar users which is a sample of all internet users; specifically the Global rank is based on unique visitor and page-view metrics from the past 3 months and the Country ranks are based on metrics from the past 1 month. If a site’s metrics are Certified the Global and Country ranks can be based on Certified Site Metrics from the past 3 months and from the past month, respectively. The Certified Site Metrics feature is available on all of our paid subscription plans: http://www.alexa.com/plans

“The rank graph at the top of the Site Overview page shows a site’s rank smoothed over the trailing 30 days, making it less meaningful than the 3 month rank. The smoothed rank plot points on the graph tend to fluctuate more often than the 3 month global rank that appears at the top of Site Overview pages.”

The statement then directed WND to the FAQs page on Alexa’s website and to another page that describes its methodology and stresses that the methodology is completely impartial in the way it measures website traffic.

“Alexa is an impartial measurement service. Our data is generated automatically for the over 20 million websites that we measure, and our ranking methods remain constant. We still use a combination of unique visitors and pageviews in order to calculate ranks for sites.

“However, over time the composition and size of our data panel does change. Our data panel is the sample of global internet traffic that is used to calculate Alexa ranks and estimate non-Certified metrics.

“We recently had a significant increase in the size of our data panel, which is why you might be seeing changes in your site’s ranks.”

Many watchdog-oriented websites have noticed that the latest rankings by Alexa have seemed to be anything but impartial, showing striking drops in popularity across the board for the biggest names in watchdog Internet journalism including the Drudge Report, Breitbart News, the Daily Caller, Newsmax, the Blaze, Infowars, PJ Media, CNSNews, Townhall.com, Activist Post and WND.

Meanwhile Alexa’s data showed increasing popularity over the same time-frame for pro-government websites like the Daily Kos, Media Matters, MSNBC, NPR, Democracy Now! and ThinkProgress.

WND’s reports on the appearance of a bias prompted a backlash from conservative media with rebukes from top officials at Breitbart News, the Daily Caller, Infowars and several other smaller website operators.

And the complaints keep coming in.

The latest to weigh in is the vice president of business and culture for the Washington, D.C.-based Media Research Center, which conducts research on media bias and also established CNSNews.com, one of the watchdog news agencies shown as loosing popularity in Alexa’s recent rankings.

“It’s essential that new media companies like Alexa take a neutral stance on media outlets. The latest data seem to indicate the company is spinning the results,” said Dan Gainor, vice president with Media Research Center. “Conservatives have had to endure bias in the old-media world. If new media companies – Alexa, Facebook, Twitter and others – won’t treat the right fairly, those companies will soon see how that damages their credibility and market share.”

mobile.wnd.com

Leo Hohmann is a news editor for WND. He has been a reporter and editor at several suburban newspapers in the Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina, areas and also served as managing editor of Triangle Business Journal in Raleigh, North Carolina.

MUST READ IF YOU ARE A NIGERIAN NEWS BLOGGER WHOSE ALEXA RANKING HAS BEEN DROPPING RECENTLY!

Is Alexa Manipulating the Internet Rankings of Your Favorite News Sites?

I’ve only been in the alternative news website business for about three years. I’ve learned a lot in that time. I’ve learned that certain analytics companies are better than others. One that is often referenced, possibly due to its long standing history, even before there was such a thing as Google, is Alexa. However, a conservative alternative news site is calling into question the Amazon company in light of recent changes that have shown conservative sites tanking in Alexa rankings while liberal websites are climbing.

Leo Hohmann at WND writes:

Those who run watchdog news websites are scratching their heads and trying to make sense of the latest data released by a California company that measures website traffic.According to data for July through September, almost every major website – from WND to the Drudge Report and Breitbart – saw its rankings drop on Alexa.com while pro-government sites mostly went up.

Alexa Internet Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon.

Familiar names in alternative media like the Drudge Report, Breitbart, Infowars, the Blaze, Newsmax, WND, FoxNews.com,and the Daily Caller all saw their rankings plummet while sites such as NPR.org, the Daily Kos, Democracy Now!, Media Matters and ThinkProgress all rose in the rankings.

Of course, there has always been speculation about various social media outlets such as Facebook restricting conservative sites on their platform, as well as Twitter being used to manipulate people’s perceptions by those that have been caught playing both sides in an effort to make conservatives look bad. This latest issue was reported on here and, honestly, when you read what’s there, it will make your blood boil and you will want to get your hands on someone.

There is no doubt that SEO and rankings can be manipulated. I’ve seen it done before. However, this is more than a coincidence, especially coming up to a mid-term election. These rankings help potential advertisers determine where they are going to spend their dollars.

In light of that, should one consider that Alexa is somehow doing something unethical? Alexa set forth what they were doing in an October 1, 2014 post. Leigh Katcher wrote, “A bigger data sample with more robust global traffic coverage means we can make better estimates, translating into more accurate rankings, traffic metrics, and actionable recommendations. With better data, we’ll be able to offer deeper insights into your site, your competitors’ site and overall traffic strategy. One immediate result of the additional data is that you may see your traffic rank fluctuate, especially for sites ranked greater than 100,000.”

Well, of course, Leigh. Only people with 100,000 or less ranking worldwide get to see those numbers in the first place. But pay attention to how they determine those rankings.

“As we mentioned above, our traffic estimates are based on data from our global panel, which is a sample of millions of Internet users using one of over 25,000 different browser extensions,” she wrote. “However, we don’t just rely on browser extensions. We also gather much of our traffic data from direct sources, including sites that have chosen to install the Alexa script and certify their metrics. It is this unique combination of data from our global panel, plus data from directly measured sources, filtered through our advanced statistical models that allow us to provide you with robust and comprehensive metrics.”

Sites like the Daily Caller and Infowars told WND that they saw significant increases from August to September, but their Alexa rankings didn’t reflect any of that.

WND’s Joseph Farah commented, “What’s happening at Alexa.com is shocking and demands a public response from Amazon.com, which owns the company. Over the 17 years WND has been around, we’ve seen this kind of thing before. It smacks, at first glance, like a deliberate effort to destroy and discredit alternative news sites – especially those that don’t grovel at the feet of government and seek to be the watchdogs the American press are supposed to be.”

“How does one explain the disparity between the recent gains on Alexa by statist, pro-government, pro-status quo, establishment sites and the precipitous drops on Alexa by the anti-establishment alternatives?” Farah asked. “These rankings are not based on dropping traffic. No such drop is taking place. The Alexa rankings over the last week suggest the company has thrown out its role as a politically impartial Internet ranking service and thrown its lot in with search engines like Google and Bing, which admittedly give preferences through their algorithms to establishment Internet content sites like CNN and Huffington Post.”

I can answer that question. It’s called manipulation. Hohmann quotes one producer of a major conservative website, who wished to remain anonymous, that said that he doesn’t use Alexa because it’s “not a perfect snapshot.”

“A lot of the sites you listed spend thousands a month to boost their posts, their traffic,” he said. “We don’t do that. It’s amazing to me how people can artificially inflate their traffic one month. Many have spent tremendously by paying Facebook and Twitter. A lot of it now is driven in the social media sphere. So my view is, I don’t want to voice any grievance against any of them – my traffic is my traffic and I’m responsible for it – but everybody is at the whim of the Facebook algorithm.”

I would agree with that. I’ve seen it at the sites I write for and edit. In fact, if you really want to get into issues with Facebook, all you have to do is see the chokehold they’ve place on people after they have paid to get Facebook likes, but then are asked by Facebook to pay more to get their posts out to those that liked their page. In the end, it’s just like gun control. It’s all about control and money.

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