Comments on: Most popular sites in Estonia?

By: Jüri Kaljundi

Jüri Kaljundi — Mon, 07 May 2007 07:48:43 +0000

Also Alexa toolbar is representative of only IE users on Windows. No other platforms are supported. Firefox market share at the same time for many Estonian sites is 30-40%, also there are other OS’s.

By: Robin Gurney

Robin Gurney — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 09:13:39 +0000

Here is an extract from the exchange with Alexa. i think you will agree it is really helpful:

—–Original Message—–
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2007 10:12 PM
To: alexa1
Subject: usage stats

as you can see from our blog there is a small debate going on about the
relevance of your top websites list for Estonia.
http://www.altex-marketing.com/most-popular-sites-in-estonia/

What seems important is to know how many people use Alexa in Estonia - I mean how many people have downloaded the toolbar.

Is there anyway you can share that number with us or give some indicator
as to the level of usage here in Estonia (and perhaps Latvia and
Lithuania) whilst you are at it.
many thanks
Robin….

7 days later this valuable data arrived:

Hello,
Thank you for contacting Alexa Internet.
Alexa does not currently publish information on its Toolbar user numbers
or demographics.
We appreciate and thank you for your interest in Alexa.
Best regards,
Alexa Internet Customer Service

Doh!

By: Robin Gurney

Robin Gurney — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 09:04:45 +0000

Fair enough, that clears that up then. Thanks guys

By: Jüri Kaljundi

Jüri Kaljundi — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 16:10:13 +0000

That is true, what Teadja said - only a few persons installing the Alexa toolbar can make it look like half of Estonia came to visit your site.

By: Teadja

Teadja — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 13:22:41 +0000

Alexa’s data is pretty off when it comes to Estonian market. Robin just install this toolbar to you computer and visit your own sites few times a day. You will see a nice boost in rankings soon. It unfortunately doesn’t mean there are bunch of new users reading your web…

By: siim teller

siim teller — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 12:09:37 +0000

It’s representative of Alexa toolbar users in Estonia That’s for sure. Only question remains - who are these people? What age, education, income, lifestyle group are they?

IF advertisers knew this information they’d have gold in their hands.

By: Robin Gurney

Robin Gurney — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 06:28:40 +0000

I didn’t make a hard call actually. I just said this could cause controversy and asked some questions.
I have just been to the Alexa site and submitted a question: asking how many people in Estonia use Alexa / have downloaded the toolbar.
Not sure if they share that info but lets see.

Also I seem to remember that (from my days studying maths) that really quite a low number can be considered statistically significant. Newspaper and telephone polls sometimes only ask a few hundred people for responses and make wider judgements based on the data.

I am not trying to “sell” the Alexa list as fully representative of the Estonian population but it must be representative of something, no?

As a marketer I find the information interesting and potentially useful. Clients who want to develop linking relationships (not just banner ads) with other sites need to know something about them and Alexa provides another list of candidates for discussion.

By: siim teller

siim teller — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 21:28:20 +0000

This time I’m in the same boat with Jüri. For US and large (especially EN language) world sites Alexa is probably pretty reliable source of information. For small countries like EE I don’t have enough information on how well Alexa is distributed here thus I’d refrain from making any hard calls on this list.

It’s probably not even representative of Russian speakers in Estonia. After all, 40% of people in Estonia are “Russian speaking”. I believe that only a minor (but perhaps active) segment of them is using Alexa toolbar.

Again, there’s no stats I’ve seen on how Alexa is distributed so this is all speculation.

By: Robin Gurney

Robin Gurney — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 20:38:33 +0000

Hi Jüri,
sure the results are different to what we might expect because they are based on Alexa toolbar users. It’s the same in any country but I am not sure its right to say they are very incorrect…

Isn’t this just a different angle on a sub-market here in Estonia?

Are you then (sort of) admitting that this list is a fair “indicator” of most popular sites with Estonian based Russian speakers?

You say some Russian speakers use Alexa a lot.
Do you have access to some stats that show that Russian speakers download Alexa more than Estonian speakers (in Estonia)?
If you do that’s great, please share.

BTW everyone reading this: Comments on my English posts are welcome in English or Estonian.

By: Jüri Kaljundi

Jüri Kaljundi — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 18:20:55 +0000

Alexa is very incorrect for any Eastern European country, as it depends on people who have installed the Alexa toolbar on their computers. Some Russian-speaking people in the Baltics use it a lot and because of that a fairly large number of Russian language sites show up for Baltics.

What is correct is One.lt, the largest and most popular Baltic Internet site, being at the position 115 in Alexa Global 500, ahead of The New York Times, Weather.com or Bebo.