Anyone who’s blogging with a goal in mind is most probably keeping an eye on the blog’s stats. The competition is strong in this area. We have Google Analytics, Statcounter , Google Trends, Technorati, Alexa, Compete and many more services.

Starting with the premise that – let’s say – the Alexa rank should not count for much in your blogging activity would be a contradictory affirmation. Why? Because:

  1. You should not blog with your stats in mind, or you’ll lose the focus on your community;
  2. As much as we hate to admit it, advertisers care about these stats.

So, we have to find that perfect way to deliver appealing content to our community, while still trying to improve our stats and attract new advertisers.

If you take a look around at how different advertising services or blog tops calculate the rates and ratings, we’ll see that each and every one takes these stats in consideration. But, what happens when the stats fail to reflect reality?

Alexa Lost the War

There’s no secret that with the latest “improvement” of their ranking system, Alexa took a decisive step towards their decline. Bloggers have talked about this and proof has been provided.

Let’s take Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger Alexa stats for example. You’ll see a big drop in his blog’s stats. Is that reflected that obviously in his activity? In his popularity? In his subscribers’ count that’s constantly growing? Same is available for John Chow.

From Blogsessive’s perspective, the story goes like this. About 3 months ago, the activity went into a bad period, due to some changes in my personal and professional life. Despite this, rankings continued to improve. In September, after my “come back”, activity has been continuously growing, making September the best month so far in all Blogsessive’s history. By the looks of it, October will be even better. Still, Alexa rankings drop.

I’d love it if someone could explain me how the best week ever fails to get a better rank than a 3 months average, taking in consideration 4 days of ranking below 40.000 and other 3 days with close traffic levels. Yet, how bad the rankings for those other 3 days have to be to come up with a 124.000 ranking? I’ve never been a huge fan of maths in school, but however you put it, this does not add up!

Also, I’ve been trying for 6 months to update that website screenshot. Is it such a complex task people?

Dear fellows at Alexa, it’s time to reconsider your system. It’s time to change, or simply disappear. Anyway, at this time, you’ve lost the stats war!

Compete is Too Slow

Since its launch, Compete has proven to be a good competitor for Alexa. A lot more information and definitely much more trustworthy. Premium accounts get even more relevant information, from traffic to keywords statistics, and most times, these confirm the reality.

So what’s the problem with Compete? The problem is that we’re living pretty darn dynamic times. Things change daily. New competitors launch daily. Information travel at light speed. So, why do I have to wait nearly one third of October and still see August stats? Where’s September’s stats and ranking?

Compete, if you want to survive this war, you need to provide that valuable information a lot faster! Otherwise, Alexa will be happy to have a companion at the end of the list.