Stats From a Hat

Today I had intended to write a post entitled “Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics” (from Mark Twain’s famous quip: “There are 3 kinds of lies - lies, damned lies, and statistics.”). Since starting this blog I have taken some interest in just how revenue is generated and sites are ranked and so forth. My intention was to compare the performance and rankings of 3 sites, 2 of which are listed on my blogroll:
1. http://blueskysportfishing.com
2. http://msmyla.wordpress.com
3. http://fashionesedaily.com

The first, Bluesky, is a sport fishing charter service in Cebu. The site is my own devise so I am completely familiar with its performance at all times. Given that it is aimed at a very very small universe - people interested in fishing in and around Cebu - it attracts few visitors (averaging perhaps 15-20 a day) though any Google or Yahoo search using terms like “sportfishing philippines”, “fishing in Cebu” etc will result in a listing anywhere between #1 and about #15. It has perhaps a dozen inbound links - i.e. other sites that include a link to it.

The second, msmyla, is a personal blog of someone I used to know. I am not privy to its actual stats but, based on previously posted numbers and guesswork, I’d suppose the site gets perhaps 30-40 hits a day. I do not know how many inbound links there are but, given this person appears to be a cyber-social butterfly, there are probably a couple of dozen.

The third, fashionese, is a joint effort of 3 Indonesian women, one of whom is one of my oldest and dearest online friends. It is extremely slick and professional in every way. I am very impressed with it. It averages over 800 hits per day and includes a forum with thousands of posts from readers. Very active, very popular in South-East Asia. I do not know how many inbound links the site has, but I’m sure it’s at least a dozen or so.

So, to the statistics/ranking part:

The two key rankings in all this cyber folderal are apparently Google Page Rank and Alexa. Google ranks pages at between 0 and 10 with the higher the number, the better - anything above 5 being very impressive. Alexa’s numbers are in the millions, with the lower the number the better. Over the past couple of months I have checked the rankings of these sites from time to time with results approximately as follows:

bluesky: Google: 1/10 Alexa: approx 8,000,000
msmyla: Google: 6/10 Alexa: 1,411,372
fashionese: Google 4/10 Alexa: approx 8,000,000

Now, given the approximate performance I provided above, it should be immediately clear that these rankings are utterly insane. The Bluesky rankings make sense, I imagine. Compare the other two though and it’s obvious that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. Msmyla’s ranking, both from Google and from Alexa make no sense at all if Bluesky’s are accurate. There is no apparent relationship between the numbers. One would assume from these numbers that the msmyla site has at least 100-150 hits per day. No? And then to continue with a comparison to fashionese, if the msmyla rankings are reasonable, should the latter’s ranking not be something like 9/10 and maybe 200,000?

So, this is what got my mind turning and made me want to write a thoroughly negative post on the subject. However, something happened. Wanting to be as up-to-the-minute as possible before writing the post, I checked the numbers again this morning. Well, well. Everything is the same except that fashionese’s Alexa rank is now 154,519! Wow! Perhaps there is hope. Perhaps it is just a matter of time before the Google rank catches up and spits out something that makes some sort of sense.

I will follow developments and post on the subject again later. In the meantime, readership for this site continues to grow apace and I’d estimate that I will have a Google 9/10 ranking within, oh…. 150 years.

Tata.