User talk:OsamaK/July 2011

Alexa bot

Cool stuff! Sure beats me keeping a list of articles I need to frequently update. The / indicators are currently used to indicate the traffic increase over a three month time period. Could you make the bot only change the indicators every three months like alexa.com does? Marcus Qwertyus 13:08, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Marcus. :) It seems that Alexa shows three different indicators for the last day, 7 days, month and three months. I thought one month is a good period to base increases and decreases on. Do you think it gives a statistical/analytical advantage to use three months period? (Please note that we are covering both large websites which rarely change as well as small websites which change every few hours!)--OsamaK 13:48, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

I think it is best to appease those that dislike recentism. The month-by-month inflation or recession of web traffic is subject to the obscure whims of Google's page rank algorithm. The decline or progress of a website cannot be measured on short-term gains or losses. The decline of this web site was apparent in a two-phased Google attack on content farms. The lulls in-between Google's attacks on crap could register as {{steady}} or worse {{increase}} based on the arbitrary day the bot happens to update the page despite the clear longterm downward trend. As a side note you could add a ~ instead of a "as of" template to demonstrate that the number is an out-of-date approximation. Marcus Qwertyus 14:56, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Alexa America ranking

The Alexa ranking bot went and removed the ranking in the US from the Conservapedia article. The American ranking is if anything the more important one for the site as it is uninterested in the rest of the world. I'll revert the change, perhaps you can fix the bot. Do you really need to update everything every month? that seems a bit frequent. Dmcq (talk) 23:21, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

I actually noticed the United States ranking but I thought an up-to-date ranking is more important than an outdated, detailed one but you're making a valid point. I temporary removed Conservapedia from the list and I think I can implement an option to include the top country's ranking soon (in Conservapedia's case, it's the United States). And yes, I think one month is fair enough because large (e.g. top 100) websites need to have more-frequently-updated information and small websites' rankings change rapidly. I guess a month is good for all kinds of websites.--OsamaK 10:47, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I guess sites like Baidu also have a much smaller following outside their home area - I doubt they're really interested in America or Europe! Dmcq (talk) 11:42, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Looks good thanks. It might be an idea in the reference attached to say the figures for the previous three month period. that might deter other people trying to update it instead. Dmcq (talk) 11:31, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm not aware of such use of references. Do you remember an article that implements this?--OsamaK (talk) 12:18, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

I meant the citation '"Conservapedia.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2011-07-15' for instance. If you follow it and press on the ? mark beside the figure it says it gives an average figure for various types of access over the previous 3 months. One can also request other periods like a week or month I believe. Dmcq (talk) 20:41, 15 July 2011 (UTC)