DeviceGuru

A baseline comparison of the Web presence of the Barack Obama and John McCain presidential campaigns can be seen in a simple Google search for each candidate’s name. A much more interesting picture emerges from Alexa’s traffic ranking charts for the two candidates websites.

As for the former of these measures, the latest Google results from simple googles of the candidates’ names are:

• Results for “Barack Obama” = 84,100,000
• Results for “John McCain” = 65,100,000

These Google results were obtained from searches using the two candidates’ names within quotation marks, as shown. Click the above two links for the latest numbers.

Alexa’s website traffic trend data

A graphic representation of trend data for both candidates’ campaign websites is provided by data from the Alexa Internet traffic website. The three charts below plot “reach,” “pageviews,” and “rank” data for the two campaign websites over the past six months, as of Oct. 27, 2008. Click each thumbnail to enlarge:

Reach, pageviews, and rank data for the two candidates’ websites
(Click each image to enlarge)

According to the Alexa data, BarackObama.com currently has an overall Internet traffic rank of 794, while JohnMcCain.com ranks 2,793. In comparison, CNET ranks 151 and Fox News ranks 250.

To change the span of time plotted in the above charts, or to view continually updated data, go here.

While it’s tempting to use these charts to predict the outcome of the upcoming U.S. presidential election, the results are based on worldwide Web traffic, not U.S. registered voter inclinations. A graph from Pollster.com, which combines the results of numerous U.S. registered voter polls, can be found here.

How Alexa ranks websites

Alexa defines the “reach” as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. A second metric, “pageviews,” is a measure of the number of unique pages on the site viewed by that site’s visitors. These two parameters are combined to generate each website’s traffic “rank,” according to Alexa, in the following manner:

The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on a value derived from these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users).

Further details on Alexa’s website traffic ranking methodology are found here.

Alexa Internet was founded in 1996. The site was acquired by Amazon.com in June of 1999.