Apr 2nd, 2007
Traffic graphs
Over the last week we received numerous emails and feedback messages pointing out that the traffic graphs no longer work properly. Since the launch of the Competitious beta, we have been using traffic graphs from Statsaholic.com (formerly Alexaholic), but these stopped working due to troubles Statsaholic was having with Alexa. You can read about the issues here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/30/amazons-war-on-statsaholic/
To remedy this situation temporarily, we began using Alexa graphs directly. However, shortly after making this fix, the Alexa graph widgets themselves stopped working everywhere. Alexa still has links on their website to these graph widgets for embedding on other sites so as far as we know this is only temporary. We hope Alexa resolves the issues with these traffic graphs soon. We will have a much more robust traffic analytics system coming with our main release in a few months that is not dependent upon Alexa.
Thanks everyone!
Alexa has modified their graph server, so that if the referer header is blank or not coming from alexa.com, only the first domain in the list will be graphed.
The Statsaholic site and widgets send blank referers (because sending a statsaholic referer results in completely blank graphs), so we’re currently limited to one domain.
This does, as you point out, affect their own widgets, so it’s a questionable business decision.
Lots more info on my blog at http://ronhornbaker.com
Ron, for a day or two they were actually blocking all graphs, even the single domain ones on our competitor pages and technorati blog pages. Looks like they just unblocked both cases as of today around 2pm PST. All of our graphs appear to be back up and running! We have been following your ongoing ordeal, thank you for the info and good luck.
The traffic graphs directly from Alexa are working again now. Thanks everyone for your patience!
Ron, we hope everything with Alexa resolves soon for you - you service is very useful.
is there any chance you guys can use quantcast or some other service? i know alexa can be helpful, but in a lot of cases their data is questionable.