Who do I believe? Comscore or Alexa?
This has been a generic questioned asked over and over by Indian entrepreneurs, as two of the leading (?) analytics services, Alexa and Comscore offer very different traffic perspective. The difference is to an extent that both of these services are losing relevance.
Case in Point: Snapdeal.
Let’s take a look at Snapdeal Traffic.
Why Snapdeal?
Because, for the last few months we have been getting tipped about Snapdeal’s falling traffic (and how it has fallen by more than 50%).
Take a look at the fall, as per Alexa.
If you believe Alexa, this graph from Comscore will blow your mind:
While Alexa shows the BIG fall between September and October, Comscore tells a different story.
* Since Alexa has no clear indicator of Unique Visitors, I have compared pageviews across the two services. Also, please note that Comscore has data only till October 2011.
What’s Amazing?
Snapdeal’s Unique Visitor traffic, which simply follows y=mx + c curve.
And this curve totally beats Alexa’s curve! (as per Alexa, Snapdeal had a major fall between Sep and Oct).
So who do we believe? And if you base your business plan based on these stats, this is a gentle reminder to rethink those excel-sheet numbers.
I have said this earlier and will say it again – there is a HUGE scope for building analytics business for rising Internet business in India (Komli’s Vizisense doesn’t really stand credible) and while startups look at ecommerce (and only ecommerce), measuring traffic could turn out to be your pot of gold.
Similarly, as per Alexa, Pluggd.in traffic is going down and down every day (so much so that we might go out of business if I stare at Alexa for more than 10 minutes), while our analytics tells us a completely different story (very healthy growth!).
So my personal belief is that while Alexa had major downloads from India in the early days (for the love of free?), the install base has gone down significantly (as people have upgraded their browsers, haven’t installed Alexa toolbar) and the service might be losing relevance.
What’s your opinion?
PS: Snapdeal is a sponsor of Pluggd.in. This post has nothing to do with the sales partnership.Snapdeal mention is purely because of the recurring anonymous note (about Snapdeal’s falling traffic).