Blog at http://blogclassroom.com/

[blybar]

Hi,
I have been told on a number of occasions that I can easily misinterpret information. However, I have looked at this a number of times now and haven't changed my first impression. So will somebody please let me know where I've gone wrong.
I'm looking at Roz's blog at http://blogclassroom.com/ today (17/10/06). On it there's a graph showing the increase in traffic to her site since she started blogging (daily traffic rank trend). The x axis is standard, ie the date from left to right, starting at Nov 2004 and moving on to today. The y axis is non standard, being a log scale. Also, the lowest number (2000) is at the top and the scale moves down from there to the highest number (80,000). Based on this I read the graph as saying that the number of hits has decreased from about 50,000 in Nov 2004 to about 15000 now (with a minimum in early 2006).
Obviously, this interpretation is not what was intended, so, am I misreading this graph? Or is it a mistake?
An additional point is that I am always suspicious when I see a log scale in an advertisement. My default position is that the advertiser is trying to pull one over on me. Is this attitude typical or am I just too pedantic for my own good?
Roz, please accept that I am not trying to deliberately find fault with anything.

[Rosalind Gardner]

Hi Bllybar,

Not a problem... I think Alexa is a little weird in the way it displays rankings too!

Here it is in it's simplest terms.

The lower the number, the HIGHER the value.

So, when I started the blog, or just before I started the blog (more accurately) my Alexa ranking was around 100,000.

When I checked yesterday it was around 7300.

It does vary (goes UP when I'm on vacation and not blogging) and gets much better when I blog regularly.

Hope that helps!

Cheers,
Ros