As a social networking consultant, I find Alexa.com, one of the top rankers of traffic to web sites, to be a valuable source of information. Knowing which sites are most influential and how my customers compare shapes my outreach strategy on their behalf. That’s why I found it ironic that a lack of information is what led to a missed public relations opportunity for Alexa.
On Twitter last Friday, the technology reporter for USA Today, Jon Swartz (@jswartz652), was on the hunt for someone from Alexa. He didn’t say whether or not he was working on a story, but that his antivirus software was blocking his access to Alexa.com. He sent a tweet requesting that someone from Alexa contact him. As Swartz pointed out, typically when he throws a request like that out into the Twittersphere, there is fast and furious response. This time, there was nothing but crickets.
Out of curiosity and a drive from my inner reporter, I wanted to see how easy it would be to track down someone from Alexa to alert he or she what was unfolding on Twitter. A major national reporter, probably in the midst of working on a story about their industry, was under the impression that their web site might be dangerous.
I found a page on the web site listing the founders, but there were no Twitter or email addresses to be found. I found their LinkedIn pages by searching Google, but I would have had to upgrade my LinkedIn account to send them “InMail” and who knows when they would have read it anyway.
Just as I gave up, Swartz tweeted that he was moving on to Quantcast and Compete. “Major fail on their part,” he tweeted.
For fun, I plugged Alexa.com into the search box at Alexa.com. How does the ranker, rank? Funny enough, no traffic ranking exists for Alexa.com. But, what it did say about how fast the site loads in comparison to others….”very slow (5.219 Seconds), 83% of sites are faster.” Fitting.
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Sharp observation, Amy — and great cartoon! I guess you are on top of the social media pack.
Myrna G.