Predicting earnings with www.alexa.com

T

thehangingman

Madrid gave me an excellent idea on how to predict certain trends like earnings. I read his last post about hits on the elitetrader site. Im not that web savy so I had no idea that www.alexa.com existed.

Here is what I found out (which some of you may have already known).

Lets take for example Blue Nile (NILE).

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.bluenile.com

(click "max" where it says range)

It appears that website views on their site has dramatically declined when compared to 2003, 2004, 2005. If this is any indicator, then their next earnings call should be very disappointing. The only other time there were less hits was in 2002 right after the recession and tech crash.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.walmart.com

Christmas of 2006 was the leanest one since Christmas of 2003 for Walmart.


http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.target.com

Same for Christmas at Target

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.bestbuy.com

Best Buy was leaner now then last year.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.realestate.com

Real estate appears to be fizziling if this is any indicator.
 
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.dell.com

Looks like Dell is going to disappoint. Lowest amount of hits since 2004.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.hp.com

HP seems to be very consistent, but not growing.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.yahoo.com

Yahoo slowly losing hits. Eroding away

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.google.com

This demonstrates Google's growth story, but it appears a peak of resistance was hit in 2006.
 
hangingman,

i've been using alexa.com for many years.

alexa is only one of several measuring services, the different services use different methods and thereby the numbers can vary a bit.

i would caution you in using alexa numbers to predict earnings.

for example, a site that is ad revenue supported and shows higher numbers on alexa will have increased ad inventory (more page views and more users), but it doesn't mean that the site is able to sell more ads to monetize the page views. selling ads and increasing traffic do not neccessarilygo hand in hand.

Yahoo is a good example of another phenomenon where alexa can send you donw the wrong road. The display ads (which is anything but search) and the revenue they generate are very traffic dependent, not just traffic in terms of numbers, but the issue is, are these users who click thru actually converting into customers?

But the search ads are even more complicated. While it is good to have have increased search traffic, what matters more in search marketing is how the search clicks are monetized. Early on, GOOG developed technology that monetized their search clicks at a much higher rate than YHOO or other search engines.

The landscape is about to change as YHOO implements a new ad platform that greatly increases search click monetization. This is a long, drawnout way to say that even if YHOO traffic is static or dwindles it can still have greatly increased revenue....kind of like increasing margins. YHOO partially released Panama in Q4, but it was not fully rolled out til Jan. Starting in Q1, you will see greatly increased revenue from search at YHOO. My prediction is that they will beat expecations by about 25%. I base that on what I've heard from industry insiders (ad agencies, other web marketers) that so far Panama is a big hit and some of these folks are taking a second look at yahoo in terms of re-allocating a higher marketing spend on yahoo.

time will tell.....
 
Im interested to see how Blue Nile reports (NILE).
28% of the float shorted, analyst recently downgraded the stock...Blue Nile is an internet only retailer. So if there is some evidence to suggest page views are at an all time low, then...
 
as for a commerce site like bluenile, traffic numbers are less meaningful and can be very misleading, lots of traffic can mean lots of lookylous not buying any product.

traffic numbers are much more meaningful for an ad revenue supported operation like GOOG, YHOO, MSN, etc.
 
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