Alas it is very very obscure in explaining what its answers mean. I
think that we (Baen.com) do very well for our size; well I think we do
but am not sure. We get five review stars. But what does "reach" mean?
I'm _guessing that that we rank around tweny-eight thousandth in popularity,
but I would like someone who speaks Alexa to verifv our status
according to Alexa. Help! Also does it seem to you that Alexa is
purposefully obscure with its definitions?

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Request for Question Clarification by palitoy-ga on 13 Dec 2005 11:09 PST

Hello jimbaen-ga,

I am not entirely sure what you require as an answer here so I will
post this as a clarification request first.

"What is Reach?
Reach measures the number of users. Reach is typically expressed as
the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. So, for
example, if a site like yahoo.com has a reach of 28%, this means that
if you took random samples of one million Internet users, you would on
average find that 280,000 of them visit yahoo.com. Alexa expresses
reach as number of users per million. Alexa's one-week and three-month
average reach are measures of daily reach, averaged over the specified
time period. The reach rank is a ranking of all sites based solely on
their reach. The three-month changes are determined by comparing a
site's current reach and reach rank with its values from three month
ago."
http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/traffic_learn_more.html#reach

"Alexa's traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa
Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period. A site's ranking is based
on a combined measure of reach and pageviews. Reach is determined by
the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day.
Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site.
However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the
same user are counted as a single pageview. The site with the highest
combination of users and pageviews is ranked #1."
http://pages.alexa.com/exec/faqsidos/help/index.html?index=1

Therefore your answer to your query as to what "reach" means, is it is
simply a measure of the number of different Alexa users that visit
your site each day.

I would have to disagree with your statement that "Alexa is
purposefully obscure with its definitions", they do define them in
their FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and on links from the related
information page (for your site this is:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=baen.com) but
admittedly perhaps not in great detail.  One of the reasons they would
not disclose them in precise detail is probably because they are
thought to be a "trade secret" - similar to how Google would not fully
disclose how its "Page Rank" is calculated.

"What is Traffic Rank?
The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical
traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined
measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa
computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web
on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the
geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time (so that the
rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site
as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). The
three-month change is determined by comparing the site's current rank
with its rank from three months ago. For example, on July 1, the
three-month change would show the difference between the rank based on
traffic during the first quarter of the year and the rank based on
traffic during the second quarter."
http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/traffic_learn_more.html#traffic_rank

Therefore it appears you are correct when you surmise that you are
approximately 28,000th in popularity amongst Alexa toolbar users.

Please let me know if you have any further questions on this subject
and whether I should post this as an answer for you.

palitoy-ga

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Clarification of Question by jimbaen-ga on 14 Dec 2005 10:43 PST

No, this doesn't really qualify as an answer. I want to know how
Baen.com compares to other sites in number of first-views and number
of multiple views, also and very importantly how Baen.com compares to
other sites that specialize in science fiction: Tor, delRey, Bantam SF
and so forth. For example, a set of answers might be (and this is what
I infer but without certainty from Alexa's numbers) that we have three
times as many page views our largest competitor, and a viewer is twice
as likely to stick around for another page view; that we a #28,000 in
size (out of how many???), and so on. Answer these two questions as
per Alexa's nebulaous instructions and I will call the question
answered. L love Google, but I am beginning not to love Alexa, even if
it is sponsored by Google.