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01/23/2003 Archived Entry: "John Hawkins"

WE'RE NUMBER 80!: At least according to John Hawkins' ranking of political websites which uses Alexa (for some problems with Hawkins' methodology, see Jonah Goldberg's entry here). Yes, it's very, very nice to see that this humble website is more popular than Newsweek, but I just can't bring myself to believe it (does anyone interested in reading Newsweek not have internet access?) And some of the rankings are just plain odd. Are there really enough crazy people out there (and people interested in craziness) to make What Really Happened the 19th most popular political website (and 7562nd most popular on the entire internet), putting it ahead of The Nation (26th), The Weekly Standard (29th), and Reason (32nd)?

Replies: 2 comments

I wasn't too surprised by What Really Happened's numbers either. There are a lot of people who go for that vile stuff.

Thanks for visiting us John!

Posted by Steve Martinovich @ 01/24/2003 09:54 AM EST

I was surprised by Newsweek's ranking as well but not by What Really Happened. I knew they were doing massive traffic.

I also read Jonah Goldberg's comments, but I can't say I agree with him (and that's a rarity). Alexa uses samples of people using their product to determine the popularity of their website -- that's pretty much the same thing that is done to determine the popularity of TV programs. Moreover, I don't know why leaving out MAC users or Netscape users would make a difference. You're talking about 20% of the net there tops (and that's probably high). Furthermore, that might effect say Netscape or Apple's ratings, but I don't see why it would effect the rankings of political websites.

Congrats on being #80...

Posted by John Hawkins @ 01/24/2003 12:26 AM EST