I am kind of shocked

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zacb
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02 Dec 2012, 12:17 pm

Alexa Data for wrongplanet.net I am honestly suprised by this. Quite a bit of the traffic actually comes from women! I never would have guessed. Matter of fact, they are overrepresented here compared to the internet populace. Any thoughts on this?

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Last edited by zacb on 03 Dec 2012, 8:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

MrXxx
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02 Dec 2012, 12:50 pm

Isn't that a representation of the overall visitor population as opposed to the membership?

Not surprising at all if you think about it. Most of them are likely mothers looking for information related to their children.

If you look in the Parenting forum here, most of the threads there are started by mothers of ASD or suspected ASD children. The reasons for that, I would think, are pretty obvious.

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Cornflake
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02 Dec 2012, 1:21 pm

I'd be more inclined to ask how they know, and what's meant by "the general internet population".

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MrXxx
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02 Dec 2012, 1:36 pm

Their explanation here:

http://aws.amazon.com/awis/faqs/#Where_ ... affic_data

Cornflake
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02 Dec 2012, 1:43 pm

Ah right. So they don't actually measure it at all.
See also this:

Alexa Web Information wrote:

Some Important Disclaimers

The traffic data are based on the set of toolbars that use Alexa data, which may not be a representative sample of the global Internet population. To the extent that our sample of users differs from the set of all Internet users, our traffic estimates may over- or under-estimate the actual traffic to any particular site.

http://www.alexa.com/help/traffic-learn-more

So, the figures they quote are statistically invented from some unknown quantity of people who bother to use their toolbar.
Isn't this normally called "BS"? :lol:

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Quatermass
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02 Dec 2012, 5:11 pm

As Mark Twain claimed that Benjamin Disraeli said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." :lol:

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Cornflake
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02 Dec 2012, 5:38 pm

Hah yes, exactly. :lol:

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sliqua-jcooter
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02 Dec 2012, 5:49 pm

Having said all of that, alexa is able to fine-tune their statistics on some of the biggest websites, comparing visits to social networking sites (who already know everything about their members - including basic demographic data), to develop a model which, while not perfect, is at least fairly representative of visitor trends.

Much the same principle of actuarial tables for insurance companies.

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Zodai
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03 Dec 2012, 1:50 am

I don't get how they would be able to get the info without putting the toolbar on, so this most likely only depicts visitors who actually bother to use the toolbar.

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hyperlexian
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03 Dec 2012, 6:20 am

i don't see how the information could be accurate on shared computers

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MrXxx
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03 Dec 2012, 10:19 am

Zodai wrote:

I don't get how they would be able to get the info without putting the toolbar on, so this most likely only depicts visitors who actually bother to use the toolbar.

Toolbars aren't necessary at all to collect user info. Websites share all kind of info with sites like doubleclick. All they really need to do is match up IP's in reports from many different sites, and voila! A profile emerges.

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04 Dec 2012, 11:37 am

zacb wrote:

Do you mind?

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