Video Site Driving fake Alexa Traffic?

I was analyzing some video sites for traffic and ran across Clipshack. Their traffic was stable for the past year or so and suddenly exploded these past few months:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=clipshack.com

At this level, I would think at least 10k unique visitors woudl be reasonable to achieve this kind of Alexa ranking.

However, looking at their adbrite ad, I see:

Pageviews per day : Over 10,000
Unique users per day : Over 3,100

Not a hecka a lot of traffic?
http://site.www.adbrite.com/mb/commerce/purchase_form.php?opid=71820&afsid=1

I wonder if sites are artificially driving traffic numbers up in hopes of getting attention and in the case of clipshack trying to get bought out? (esp after seeing Yt)

Just a thought. The numbers dont work out in my opinion. What do you think?

 

Well something's happening for sure with clipshack's ratings. While alexa can be seriously and quite easily faked out - the numbers are quite high though.

You say that Over 3100 unique users per day is not a heck of a lot of traffic?

You're kidding me right?

 

Serious. 3100 uniques is quite peanuts especially for that kind of alexa ranking / reach.

 

3100 uniques/day is is about 90k alexa rank so yes, it's peanuts compared to the ranking they have now. It's rather strange. Either adbrite stats are taken differently (average out of total months - which would make sense since their traffic only exploded recently) or alexa is being faked.

 

Cool. Glad you agree. As it turns out I am seeing a couple other sites that have similar traits (not uncommon). I think a lot of people see Alexa at face value and of course there is that ego trip to out rank your competitor

 

Looks like they use an ad rotator to me.

 

alexa traffic means nothing

 

True, however its sometimes a ego trip especially since the internet business is all about numbers and traffic

 

Even youtube is doing it?
http://webmeasurement.wordpress.com/

"
Youtube numbers are fake
October 17th, 2006

YouTube’s claims of serving 100 million videos per day are already proven wrong. I always wondered about high numbers like that, not only since recent controversy about Digg.com. The number is obviously not accurate at all.

Pete Cashmore over at Mashable now proved that the numbers are fake. Pete’s fake profile currently ranks under the top 100 Youtube videos and already received more than 20000 views. He basicially uses a simple refresh trick that already worked with simple tracking tools about 10 years ago.

Not onlythe views are wrong, but also the length of the video is only 7 seconds. So how much is a 7 second video worth in real life?

The numbers are also fake, b/c users tend to launch a video and stop it. Like on your TV. I am not sure if Google knows about that, but it is once more proven that numbers can be easily faked."

 

http://mashable.com/2006/10/16/gaming-youtube-for-fun-and-profit/

 

jumping on the youtube bandwagon. $$

 

I don't agree at all with that statement. That may have been true as recent as a year ago, it is not that way anymore

 

I completely agree with yfs1...Dont think faking Alexa is possible these days.

 

But how?., It took 1 year for us to get into the below 2000 rank.,

 

There must have been some minor glitches...actually the algorithm for the page rankings are still computerised...so sometimes even a minor lacking may cause devastative difference in the overall ratings.

 

Adbrite is probably the glitch. There traffic updates can be very slow at times. Especially, if a site was at a certain level for a long time. I had a site that was getting around 500-750 per day and adbrite said over 400 per day. Traffic bumped up one month to over 2000 per day and the entire time adbrite never said over 650 per day.

 

Actually It is still possible, check out this thread for abit more info:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=150995&highlight=alexa+rankings

 

Actually I believe that sometime if a website is faking any system - its gon get caught. For websites as big as Alexa, they are well aware of the glitches or they will know - its just a matter of time. Once websites are caught cheating - they will be submerged to a blacklist from where they will never rise again.

I think long term - and I know its suicidal even to attempt cheating any services.

 

I think You can fake the system using fake ips, but there is no benefits derived from it. We still use our rankings to compare with our competitors, Alexa ranking surely helps for that., though we do not manipulate

 

Can't cheat the system too long...check out this screenshot:

http://www.indexofimages.com/uploads/a6e3bce33a.png

Got as high as 9000 on Alexa and now 95,000.

Was it fake? I say yes.