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Disturbing mystery affecting your favorite news sites
WND ^ | October 14, 2014 | Leo Hohmann

Posted on 10/14/2014 6:55:42 AM PDT by upbeat5

Those who run watchdog news websites are scratching their heads and trying to make sense of the latest data released by a California company that measures website traffic.

According to data for July through September, almost every major website – from WND to the Drudge Report and Breitbart – saw its rankings drop on Alexa.com while pro-government sites mostly went up.

Alexa Internet Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon.

Familiar names in alternative media like the Drudge Report, Breitbart, Infowars, the Blaze, Newsmax, WND, FoxNews.com, and the Daily Caller all saw their rankings plummet while sites such as NPR.org, the Daily Kos, Democracy Now!, Media Matters and ThinkProgress all rose in the rankings.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/10/your-favorite-news-sites-shafted-by-amazon/#6oeYoU6ylvjfeGhb.99

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


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: alexa; rankings; websites
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1 posted on 10/14/2014 6:55:42 AM PDT by upbeat5
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To: upbeat5

The fix is in. Ebolabama is preparing his October Surprise.


2 posted on 10/14/2014 6:58:17 AM PDT by Candor7 (Obama fascism article:(http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html))
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To: upbeat5
According to data for July through September, almost every major website – from WND to the Drudge Report and Breitbart – saw its rankings drop on Alexa.com while pro-government sites mostly went up. Alexa Internet Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon. Familiar names in alternative media like the Drudge Report, Breitbart, Infowars, the Blaze, Newsmax, WND, FoxNews.com, and the Daily Caller all saw their rankings plummet while sites such as NPR.org, the Daily Kos, Democracy Now!, Media Matters and ThinkProgress all rose in the rankings.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/10/your-favorite-news-sites-shafted-by-amazon/#6oeYoU6ylvjfeGhb.99

PFL

3 posted on 10/14/2014 6:58:50 AM PDT by Alex Murphy ("the defacto Leader of the FR Calvinist Protestant Brigades")
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To: upbeat5

Pay no attention to the man behind that curtain...... ;-)


4 posted on 10/14/2014 6:59:20 AM PDT by soozla (Truth prevails, regardless of who is willing to accept it – now, or later.)
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To: upbeat5

From personal experience, I can state that I cannot stay on many of these sites because Internet Explorer knocks me off. In addition, links to the sites are often hit with warnings from the Virus Protection service I subscribe to via Verizon. Anyone think there’s a link?


5 posted on 10/14/2014 7:00:40 AM PDT by cumbo78
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To: upbeat5

Nice little website traffic rating site you have there. To bad if it got shut down.


6 posted on 10/14/2014 7:02:16 AM PDT by Enterprise ("Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire)
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To: upbeat5

Jeff Bezos owns the WaPo. Duh!


7 posted on 10/14/2014 7:03:09 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: upbeat5

Where does Alexa get its info? Surely this isn’t proprietary information that can’t be duplicated or verified.


8 posted on 10/14/2014 7:03:26 AM PDT by Excellence (Marine mom since April 11, 2014)
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To: upbeat5

News sites are propaganda.

They may be right wing or left wing, but either way, they’re propaganda.

That being said, in such propaganda material there will be pieces and parts of truth here and there, but any “analysis” will mostly be purposely wrong.

I know I cut down a lot on visits to Drudge when the ebola thing started.

Drudge’s story selection is becoming just anything that will hype.

None of this is geared towards informing sheeple people of the real facts about what goes on which actually affect their lives. It’s just what globalism wants to put into the minds of the sheeple. This is even true for local papers - a propaganda operation quite astonishing in scope.

But it’s easy once you concentrate ownership of news media in a few very large companies.


9 posted on 10/14/2014 7:04:38 AM PDT by PieterCasparzen (We have to fix things ourselves)
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The “traffic” is spiking on govt sites because they are constantly under DOS attacks. Never seen anything like this before.


10 posted on 10/14/2014 7:05:25 AM PDT by USCG SimTech (Honored to serve since '71)
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To: Excellence

Alexa installs a virus in your pc that reports back to them, all your browser activities. Alexa has been doing that to unsuspecting users for close to a decade. I won’t go there.
I wouldn’t doubt that Alexa pays off the virus and security sites to ignore the invasion.


11 posted on 10/14/2014 7:05:29 AM PDT by George from New England (escaped CT in 2006, now living north of Tampa)
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To: Alex Murphy

“... NPR.org, the Daily Kos, Democracy Now!, Media Matters and ThinkProgress...”

Huh! I’ve never gone to any of those sites.


12 posted on 10/14/2014 7:07:18 AM PDT by SatinDoll (A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN IS BORN IN THE US OF US CITIZEN PARENTS.)
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To: cumbo78

13 posted on 10/14/2014 7:07:32 AM PDT by Brother Cracker (You are more likely to find krugerrands in a Cracker Jack box than 22 ammo at Wal-Mart)
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To: upbeat5
From a little later in the article.

The producer of a major conservative website, who asked not to be identified, said he doesn’t give too much credence to any single monitoring site’s data.

“I don’t often go to Alexa,” he said. “Alexa is not a perfect snapshot. It’s based on a pool of people who have to agree to be tracked. Alexa has its own panel. And they don’t represent a very broad section of the country. They tend to skew things toward techies and people in the western part of the country.”

The source said some websites can “buy” a higher traffic rating from powerful social media companies like Facebook and Twitter.

14 posted on 10/14/2014 7:07:50 AM PDT by Textide (Lord, grant that I may always be right, for thou knowest I am hard to turn. ~ Scotch-Irish prayer)
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To: upbeat5

Psychological warfare. The Oz curtain at work trying to destroy morale among the troops I’d bet.


15 posted on 10/14/2014 7:10:19 AM PDT by jsanders2001
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To: George from New England

I use Do Not Track Me and you need to specifically block the analytic cookies or else, it will automatically allow them. I block them and I visit all the right wing sites at least once a day.

I’m pretty sure Alexa uses a cookie, not a virus.

Also, Better Privacy will delete long term cookies. I have it set to ask me each time, so I can leave the ones for Paypal or Hulu on my machine to facilitate login.

Also, Firefox is, IMO, better than Explorer.

I live in the boonies and have Frontier as an ISP. They have been slow for weeks and the internet connection goes in and out. Streaming at certain times in the evening can be annoying, as it reloads every few minutes. I just shut it down and come back later.Could be my modem and we are on DSL, so I will shut the modem down and reboot when things get wonky. Has worked, so far.


16 posted on 10/14/2014 7:13:08 AM PDT by reformedliberal
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To: cumbo78

For one thing, why are you still using Explorer? I used to go back to it occasionally for websites that only worked with IE but each time my aversion to IE was reinforced. I finally figured out that websites that were only IE usable were poison anyway, either intellectually or digitally.


17 posted on 10/14/2014 7:13:10 AM PDT by arthurus
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To: George from New England

Trackware.Alexa

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2004-062410-3624-99


18 posted on 10/14/2014 7:13:23 AM PDT by Brother Cracker (You are more likely to find krugerrands in a Cracker Jack box than 22 ammo at Wal-Mart)
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To: upbeat5

Considering how stupid the left-wingers are—especially concerning computers—witness the ‘scratched hard disk’ line of drivel, they probably believe adding numbers to their preferred websites statistics actually increases the amount of live readers.


19 posted on 10/14/2014 7:14:27 AM PDT by W. (Now playing: The most inept administration in history--Jimmah Cottah beams with pride!)
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To: upbeat5

So Obama’s approval rating continues to drop and sits that support him experience an uptick?


20 posted on 10/14/2014 7:14:49 AM PDT by ransomnote
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