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Can someone explain why FreakRepublic beats DU on Alexa?

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seeker4ever Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-09-05 09:42 PM
Original message
Can someone explain why FreakRepublic beats DU on Alexa?
Edited on Sat Apr-09-05 09:44 PM by seeker4ever
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derby378 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-09-05 09:45 PM
Response to Original message
1. Nope, you're reading it right
Either Alexa has been hacked, or this country is in big trouble.

Maybe we need to stop trolling FR for yuks at the neo-cons there?
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papau Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-09-05 10:03 PM
Response to Reply #1
7. I expect DUers use cookie/spy controls - and Freepers do not
so a large part of DU hits never get reported to Alexa.
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Patchuli Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-09-05 09:47 PM
Response to Original message
2. 'cause they're more dysfunctional than
DUers? :freak:
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Maestro Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-09-05 09:47 PM
Response to Original message
3. Do users who visit places on the web
have to have the alexa plug-in on their computers? I have always removed because it is tagged as spyware. Perhaps, many DUers don't have it; therefore, some traffic is not registered. :shrug:
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derby378 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-09-05 09:48 PM
Response to Reply #3
4. If so, how do we get the plug-in?
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RevolutionaryActs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-09-05 09:49 PM
Response to Original message
5. I don't even know what Alexa is.
:shrug:
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elshiva Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-09-05 10:14 PM
Response to Reply #5
8. Me neither!
But unfortunately I've been to Freeperville...:puke:
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seeker4ever Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-09-05 09:50 PM
Response to Original message
6. I don't think you need a plug in.
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drm604 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-09-05 11:38 PM
Response to Original message
9. Info on Alexa
Some articles:

Wikipedia article on Alexa Internet


Wikipedia article on Alex Toolbar


About the Alexa Traffic Rankings This page is on Alexa's website and gives a disclaimer about possible biases in their data.

Some Important Disclaimers
The traffic data are based on the set of Alexa users, which may not be a representative sample of the global Internet population. Known biases include (but are likely not limited to) the following:

* Our users are disproportionately likely to visit alexa.com, amazon.com and archive.org, and traffic to these sites may be substantially overcounted.
* The Alexa Toolbar works only with the Internet Explorer browser. Sites frequented mainly by users of other browsers will be undercounted. For example, the AOL/Netscape browser is not supported, which means that Alexa collects little data from AOL users, and our traffic to aol.com is likely lower than it would be for a more representative sample.
* The Alexa Toolbar works only on Windows operating systems. Although a large majority of the Internet population currently used Windows, traffic to any sites which are disproportionately visited by users of other operating systems will be undercounted.
* The rate of adoption of Alexa software in different parts of the world may vary widely due to advertising locality, language, and other geographic and cultural factors. For example, to some extent the prominence of Korean sites among our top-ranked sites reflects known high rates of general Internet usage in South Korea, but there may also be a disproportionate number of Korean Alexa users.
* In some cases traffic data may also be adversely affected by our "site" definitions. With tens of millions of hosts on the Internet, our automated procedures for determining which hosts are serving the "same" content may be incorrect and/or out-of-date. Similarly, the determinations of domains and home pages may not always be accurate. When these determinations change (as they do periodically), there may be sudden artificial changes in the Alexa traffic rankings for some sites as a consequence.
* The Alexa Toolbar turns itself off on secure pages (https:). Sites with secure page views will be under-represented in the Alexa traffic data.

In addition to the biases above, the Alexa user base is only a sample of the Internet population, and sites with relatively low traffic will not be accurately ranked by Alexa due to the statistical limitations of the sample. Alexa's data come from a large sample of several million Alexa Toolbar users; however, this is not large enough to accurately determine the rankings of sites with fewer than roughly 1,000 total monthly visitors. Generally, Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data we receive is not statistically significant. Conversely, the more traffic a site receives (the closer it gets to the number 1 position), the more reliable its Traffic Ranking becomes.

In order for Alexa to count your visits to a website you must be using Internet Explorer and you must have the Alexa toolbar installed. One might speculate as follows on how these facts might possibly skew the numbers regarding democraticunderground.com and freerepublic.com.


  1. People who are more technologically savvy, or more concerned about and aware of personal privacy issues, or simply more intelligent, are more likely to be using an alternative browser or, if they are using Internet Explorer, are less likely to have the Alexa toolbar installed.
  2. It would follow from point 1 that, given two groups of people, group A and group B, where group A is more savvy, intelligent, etc., Alexa ratings will be skewed in favor of group B.

One might further speculate as to which of these two groups frequents which of the two websites in question, but of course one wouldn't want to do so for fear of unfairly stereotyping.

Or I could just state outright that Freepers are more likely to be clueless and gullible and therefore more likely to be tricked into installing intrusive tracking software on their computers. :evilgrin:

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LynzM Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-09-05 11:41 PM
Response to Reply #9
10. Great post, DRM
Thanks for all the info! *posting through Opera, no Alexa tracking here!*
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drm604 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-09-05 11:47 PM
Response to Reply #10
11. I'm using Firefox, which seems to be popular with DUers. nt
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drm604 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-10-05 09:05 PM
Response to Reply #9
12. Kick
Kicking because I'm interested in hearing other peoples ideas on this discrepancy. I'm not sure that my theory completely explains it. If they really are getting more visitors than us, maybe we should be thinking about how we can increase our visibility and popularity.
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Prisoner_Number_Six Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-10-05 09:10 PM
Response to Reply #9
13. Alexa is automatically installed with any new version of IE
Edited on Sun Apr-10-05 09:11 PM by Prisoner_Number_Six
and is detected by Ad-Aware as spyware. Ad-Aware will remove it automatically. I always remove it because I don't want them tracking me without my permission.
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drm604 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-11-05 12:03 AM
Response to Reply #13
14. Maybe Freepers are less likely to look for and remove it.
I don't hang out at freerepublic.com, does anyone know if they have many discussions about computers, browsers, adware, etc.?
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