Alexa have been providing stats on web page hits for ages. I was looking at the effect Venkman has had on Getahead when I noticed that there is stuff that the image generation page can do that you don't get from the web interface. Plus the web interface could do with some Ajax goodness rolling over it. So here is my quick Alexa/Ajax* web-reach hack.

Note: If you are reading this through an RSS reader then you probably need to try looking at the original. I really hope this page doesn't work in your aggregator because if my Javascript gets to your screen unchanged then you have a very bad XSS security hole.

One new thing is the ability to compare more than one site at a time. So here is a comparison of the reach of some Java open source development sites:

You can also update it dynamically so you can also compare getahead.ltd.uk, the home of DWR with dwr.com the home of trendy furniture. One day maybe ...

(UPDATED: Alexa got me confused with another site (gascoignes.net) recently and deleted some recent stats so the graph has getahead on a bit of a roler coster ride in the past few weeks. From what I can tell gascoignes.net gets no traffic, so it doesn't skew the results at all.)

You can also use it to compare some other sites reaches: (These links are clickable in IE)

• Java News Sites (The growth of Ajaxian.com is fairly impressive)
• Tech News Sites (Test ElReg's claims to greatness)
• The big boys
• Java open source development sites
• Who's the greatest DWR.

Finally you can use this page to create you own comparisons.

Have fun.

Site 1:
Site 2:
Site 3:
Site 4:
Site 5:

What comparisons have you found interesting?

* I'm using a broad definition of Ajax before someone gets picky about use of XHR.

Update: Mike Linksvayer has done a similar thing, however his has a few more options. It's worth checking out.

Responses[4]

Posted by Joe Walker on 18 January 2006 14:18:04 GMT #