I know I have a relatively small site, but if you can’t even get the trend right, why bother?

And check out Pete Distad of Hulu

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7 Response Comments

  • Chris  July 22, 2011 at 10:19 am

    You’re not the only one. I was doing some research on Compete and those graphs seemed goofy – compared a bunch of Quantified (the directly counted) ones against their Compete graphs, and Compete shows many of them declining when they are really holding steady at least.

    Or maybe you just faked the G Analytics chart to make it look like your site isn’t dying 🙂

  • Andrew Shotland  July 22, 2011 at 10:23 am

    #busted! 🙂

    Wait til you see the July traffic. Off the charts.

  • Eric Lander  July 22, 2011 at 10:25 am

    Every tool that I’ve used has been off by a large degree. Quantcast, HitWise, and others -all charging a steep fee – get even some of the most basic elements (volume, trend) wrong.

  • Jeff Ferguson  July 22, 2011 at 10:42 am

    Ugh, no kidding. I actually used them for a potential client once, just to give them an idea of the range of potential against their competitors and the prospect said the numbers for his site were “way off.” Glad I got 50% off that first month so I didn’t feel completely screwed…

  • Chris Reilly  July 23, 2011 at 2:54 pm

    Perhaps Compete.com’s panel is shrinking???

  • Kelly Smith  July 25, 2011 at 9:49 am

    Thanks for pointing this out as I had not checked on its “truthfullness” before and accepted the graphs as given. I will now be more diligent in my reporting of this tool, as I use it almost every day with my customers. What I don’t understand is “why” they are so far off? What are they trying to prove or show? Very curious. Maybe there is some other cause to this or maybe they are trying to get more sales, although I am not sure how incorrect results will translate to more sales.

    • Andrew Shotland  July 25, 2011 at 1:13 pm

      Kelly,

      The reason they are off is because they don’t have access to a complete set of data. They license traffic data from ISPs, toolbar companies, etc. I am not sure how transparent they are about their data sources so there’s likely no way of knowing where the holes are. I used to think they were wrong on the numbers, right on the trend. But now I think they are just plain wrong.