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Kos Traffic Numbers Inflated by 60% [ "Phony" Stats Report! ]
patrickruffini.com ^ | 10/03/07 | Patrick Ruffini

Posted on 10/07/2007 3:19:23 PM PDT by melt

Yesterday, I had the good “fortune” of being frontpaged on Daily Kos. The post sat atop the site for two hours. According to Google Analytics, the link produced 1,164 visitors yesterday. For the traffic behemoth Kos is portrayed as, that seems low, especially since he linked to two posts of mine. I went and looked at other notable traffic spikes this year, and this one isn’t really even close to some other blockbuster links.

For instance,

A Marc Ambinder link (linked to by Andrew Sullivan) to my 2008 Wire videowall produced 2,205 visits on June 5th.

A link from the Real Clear Politics homepage on August 17th produced 1,889 visits. Now, Kos was semi-complimentary in his link. He wasn’t direct in telling his readers to rape and pillage my servers. And I know well that the wording of a link and how it’s presented can dramatically impact the clickthrough rate. If there’s a site I need to link to but I don’t want to reward with lots of traffic, I hyperlink certain words and not others to minimize clickthrough (in addition to sticking in a rel=”nofollow” directive).

But this got me thinking, especially since a sub-theme in the linked post suggested Kos was not all he was cracked up to be in terms of his audience size.

Earlier today, it was pointed out to me that Kos’s average visit length was all of 2 seconds, suggesting either a coordinated attempt to bomb the site with fake traffic or an extremely low level of engagement on the part of his readers. This seemed as remarkable, given the breathless huffing and puffing about his community platform being a game changer in terms of traffic and audience reach.

So I started to do some digging around his SiteMeter stats...

(Excerpt) Read more at patrickruffini.com ...


TOPICS: Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: dailykos; demlies; kos; lyingliberals; markosmoulitsas; scam; traffic
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To: melt

You mean that a Lefist lied about something? Say it ain’t so!


41 posted on 10/07/2007 4:50:41 PM PDT by redpoll (redpoll)
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To: SW6906
So what’s the bottom line, in English: Does Kos have more members than we do? Do they have more traffic? Are their statistics inflated or just inaccurate because of the method used or ??? Thanks.

I honestly don't know. I do know that in late 2005 there were a lot of people banned here for various reasons. That would account for the shift. Others have mentioned that not using IE as a browser and spyware blockers could skew the results.

42 posted on 10/07/2007 5:04:32 PM PDT by raybbr (You think it's bad now - wait till the anchor babies start to vote.)
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To: melt

I’ve heard it claimed that Markos (”Kos”) is a military veteran. Does anyone know the facts on this?


43 posted on 10/07/2007 5:46:35 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (Security * Unity * Prosperity | Fred08.com)
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To: Riley; picard

I am so stealing that.


44 posted on 10/07/2007 5:53:20 PM PDT by martin_fierro (< |:)~)
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To: longtermmemmory; melt
From Quantcast:

Daily Kos Estimated Monthly Uniques - 262,944

Free Republic Estimated Monthly Uniques - 892,515

Quantcast provides reasonably reliable statistics, similar to Neilson and others, as opposed to easily corrupted stats that supposedly count page visits like SiteMeter does.

In other words, if you are an advertiser looking to spend money on web advertising, you would go to someplace like Quantcast; if you are running a website and want to get an idea of your stats, you go to your server logs. If you're too stupid to read/analyze your server logs, you put a page counter on your website. Page hit counters were funny in 1997.

I can't count the ways in which page hit counters are useless.

45 posted on 10/07/2007 5:57:30 PM PDT by hadit2here ("Most men would rather die than think. Many do." - Bertrand Russell)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet; longtermmemmory

See post #27. I didn’t know this, either.


46 posted on 10/07/2007 6:29:16 PM PDT by melt (Someday, they'll wish their Jihad... Jihadn't.)
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To: hadit2here; All

That is fascinating. Thanks for the valuable information.


47 posted on 10/07/2007 6:37:38 PM PDT by melt (Someday, they'll wish their Jihad... Jihadn't.)
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To: melt
I don’t have a problem with aliens becoming citizens after serving in our military. If anyone deserves citizenship, it’s someone that has defended the United States. So what if once in awhile they are an left-wing idiot like this guy? Stuff happens. I’ll bet most of them make a great addition to our country and this guy is an aberration, albeit a very visible one.
48 posted on 10/07/2007 6:38:19 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (Security * Unity * Prosperity | Fred08.com)
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To: melt

Phony website, phony soldiers, what do you expect? I wonder if anybody will pick this up.


49 posted on 10/07/2007 7:02:44 PM PDT by ozzymandus
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To: melt

I’ve heard that Moulitsas’ score of 83 on an IQ test was inflated 60% as well.


50 posted on 10/07/2007 7:05:39 PM PDT by puroresu (Enjoy ASIAN CINEMA? See my Freeper page for recommendations (updated!).)
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To: ozzymandus

if Kos uses clicks for advertising then the advertisers should care.

If the advertisers do not care then there is an element of fraud. it would be similar to using a restaurant to launder illegal crime money.

If an advertiser is using fake clicks to pump money into kos in exchange for certain stories being emphasised or positions being taken then there has to be a campaign fraud there.


51 posted on 10/07/2007 8:16:10 PM PDT by longtermmemmory (VOTE! http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov)
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To: picard

>>>It’s a picture of dogs wearing helmets.

The leader of the pack.


52 posted on 10/07/2007 8:58:52 PM PDT by tlb
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To: raybbr

Yeah, if you have to us IE to get the stats, then the many, many people here on FR that use Firefox wouldn’t be counted.....thanks!


53 posted on 10/08/2007 4:39:17 AM PDT by SW6906 (6 things you can't have too much of: sex, money, firewood, horsepower, guns and ammunition.)
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To: SW6906

Add one more FireFox user to the count of missing Freepers ...


54 posted on 10/08/2007 4:57:25 AM PDT by Robert A Cook PE (I can only donate monthly, but Hillary's ABBCNNBCBS continue to lie every day!)
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