Stephen Garner has a good supplement to an NZ Listener article about "the ongoing tensions, or should that be conflict, between established providers of information (i.e. encyclopaedia publishers) and projects like Wikipedia." Stephen in typicaly helpful and thorough manner adds links that are missing from the Listener so do lok at his piece as well as the original!
[to Del.icio.us]
The Listener's facts are questionable.
Firstly, Alexa is a poor source for traffic numbers--their sample size is quite small. For instance, internal domains have long made up a signficant fraction of the traffic Alexa attributes to eb.com domains. Having seen the actual traffic numbers of both EB's internal and external domains, I can assure you Alexa's numbers are far out of whack.
Secondly, even if Alexa's numbers are accurate, they are different from what the Listener reports. For instance, right now alexa is reporting a 22% drop in britannica.com's rank over the past three months, less than half of what listener claimed.
Thirdly, Alexa doesn't report raw traffic numbers, but relative rankings (much like Amazon's sales rankings).
Fourthly, and perhaps most signficantly, the numbers reported by the listener are quite misleading.
1. Britannica's reach, rank and page views per user have actually increased over the past three months.
2. The Listener fails to recognize that like many Internet sites, and like reference sites in particular, Britannica's traffic is seasonal. There has been a signficant drop in Britannica's traffic during the northern hemisphere's summer every year since 1994. Comparing traffic in August with traffic in May, you are always going to find a signficnat drop. It's like comparing Saturday morning's TV audience with Thursday evening. Comparing year-to-year numbers (what most would consider an apples-to-apples comparision) we see that Britanica.com's traffic is increasing and has been increasing for a few years now, even according to Alexa's numbers (reach, rank and page views per user).
Arguably Wikipedia's rising tide has raised all reference boats.
Finally, Robert McHenry hasn't been Britannica's editor-in-chief for over a decade.
