The most untrusted analytics service: Alexa! But can the marketers and site owners stop living in the past?

Alexa! One traffic analytics website every novice (In the field of Digital Marketing) keeps talking about in Kenya. I have even come across some major site owners and media personalities who never waste an opportunity of giving Alexa as a reference to boast about their site ranking. But the question is how many actual marketers (Intelligent ones) out there actually trust a site like Alexa whose whole model is based on the number of 'toolbar' downloads.

To start with, Alexa doesn't talk anything about Unique Visitors on your site and the ranking of your site heavily depends on the number of Alexa toolbars downloaded in this country.

There was a time when Alexa was used heavily and the trust level was a bit fine because there were hardly any 'FREE' tools available but that was the Jurassic Era when the earth was ruled by Dinosaurs. Now there are much more reliable and trust worthy analytic services available like ComScore, Google Trends, Google Ad planner etc.

Let's do a comparative analysis of the traffic numbers from these different services-

1.) Google Trends

Google Trends gives you an indicative traffic report based on the number of searches made on its search website. Interestingly enough following are the results when we compared Nation,Standard Media, CapitalFM, DealFish and the Business Daily website.

 Now as you can see, Nation is the undisputed leader of the lot, while Standard media follows behind with a decent gap. However the 3rd site amongst these sites is Business Daily. DealFish and CapitalFM are almost negligible.

2.) Alexa Rankings

Now let's compare the same websites on Alexa. Alexa ranks these sites as following in Kenya:-

www.nation.co.ke - Rank 9th (The only East African site in the top 10)
www.dealfish.co.ke - Rank 12th (Ok, you guys can laugh out loud on this)
www.standardmedia.co.ke - Rank 15th
www.capitalFM.co.ke - Rank 16th (There was a time when this site was right behind Nation on Alexa but it seems most of the Capital FM employees have upgraded their browsers and do not have the Alexa toolbars anymore)
www.businessdailyafrica.com - Rank 30th (Whoa!! The no 3 site in the lot as per Google Trends is no 30 here)

3.) Google Ad Planner

Now coming to one of the most trusted analytical tool used by the marketers and media buyers across the globe which is Google Ad Planner. You can access this site at http://Google.com/Adplanner and do the comparison on your own.

According to the Google Ad Planner, the traffic on our sample sites are as follows- (For the month of October)

1.) www.nation.co.ke - 38 MILLION Page views
2.) www.standardmedia.co.ke - 15 Million Page views
3.) www.dealfish.co.ke - 2.6 Million Page views
4.) www.businessdailyafrica.com - 1.6 Million Page views
5.) www.capitalfm.co.ke - 840,000 Page views

Nation, as you see clearly leads the online business with a MASSIVE 38 Million pageviews every month and Dealfish which according to Alexa is no 2 hangs around with only 2.6 Million page views a month. Business Daily which according to Alexa is no 30 has almost double the traffic than Capital FM which stands at no 16 on the Alexa rankings.

4.) ComScore

Unfortunately the Comscore data is ONLY available for the www.nation.co.ke website and no other Kenyan site appears on their list therefore its not possible to do any analysis using this service. However according to Comscore, Nation gets around 4.3 Million Unique visitors every month.

The question is open to all of you out there as to which service do you trust more? Is it Google Trends (Search based comparison) or Google ad planner (Highly polished tracking based analytics) or an age old clumsy software aka Alexa?

The Top 5 Facebook Fanpages of Kenya!!

Around the world, Google is the number 1 site where as Facebook stands at number 2 but Kenya being Kenya and Kenyans being seriously Kenyans, the trend is different here. Facebook proudly stands at the number 1 position here while Google looks up at no 2. But what does this tells us about Kenya? That we prefer to interact more and when it comes to information search, we always prefer the trusted sources rather than a Google search. I might be wrong, but this is what I derive out of it.

But anyways lets focus on the title as of now, the top 5 facebook fanpages of Kenya. What makes a Fanpage successful? Is it the fan following? or is it the level of interactivity? or the amount of Entertainment to the fans? I guess, we all can answer this well. A mix of everything in the right order. So basis these factors, here is the rating:-

5.) CAPITAL FM

A fan following of 73,820 people makes CapitalFM number 5 in our rankings but they seriously need to get a professional doing their updates on this page. A thing as simple as posting links looks like alien to them. The majority of updates are focused on relationships and people seem to be fine with that. On a macro level, its nothing but an extension of their radio station.


Overall Ranking- 2.8/5


4.) CITIZEN TV

With a fan following of 67,870 people, Citizen TV stands at the 4 position. The level of interaction is decent but can still be better. The topics for discussion are mixed and provide a wider platform to the users to interact.

Overall Rating- 3/5


3.) DAILY NATION

A fan following of 83,904 is really HUGE especially when you see the level of interaction is equally high (Every post gets an average 110 comments and depending on the nature of news, likes around 24-48). Being a newspaper and primarily a news site, the fanpage again here is an extension to the same service, However this is a true example of how a news service can stay true to its identity and still entertain its users. The tone of the conversation is serious yet convincing.

Overall Rating: 4/5 Stars

2.) EASY FM

 The fanpage which started it all. Easy FM's Facebook fanpage has a mind blowing following of around 150,000 people and the level of interaction is a dream for any marketer, with an average of 400 odd comments and around 100 likes. Strikingly though, the focus of conversation remains majorly on relationships but that's what people like about this fanpage I guess. They refuse to get bored here. Its cheese, street-smart and elegant. As I said before, every marketer would love to display or post their products on this fanpage especially if its youth or women oriented.

Overall Rating: 4.5/5



1.) NTV KENYA

AND the Winner is here. The growth of NTV Kenya's fanpage has been astronomical in the last 4 months. From a figure of 36,000 in may it has now reached to a rock solid 130,000 people. The best part is that the discussion topics and posts are like a rainbow. You get updates about Sports, politics, humor, life and infact everything and anything that's happening around. The tonality is full of masala entertainment, especially the tongue in cheek updates. The level of interaction is very high as compared to any other fanpage in Kenya and in no way any less than international media fanpages. Highly Engaging, Highly Entertaining.

Overall Ranking: 4.8/5

Well this was my point of view to judge the fanpages, if you guys have a different point of view to share or if you think there is any other Kenyan fanpage that deserves to be in the list then kindly provide me with your feedback. I would really appreciate that. Cheers!!