Multiply According To Alexa

First, what is Alexa? According to their "About" page Alexa has built an unparalleled database of information about web sites, including statistics, Related Links, and more. Their information comes from internet users who have installed the Alexa toolbar in their browsers. The toolbar collects information about their web browsing; what sites they visit, how long they stay, etc... Alexa then uses this information to rate websites according to parameters including Traffic Rank (how the site compares to the rest of the internet using site visits as a gauge) and Search Traffic (the percentage of site visits coming from search engine results) among others.

The long term results aren't encouraging, over the past two years Multiply is showing a significant and steady decline in almost every category. Traffic rank is down, daily reach is down, page views are down, time on site is down, visits from search engines are down, the list goes on. A full 42% of its page visits are bounces,meaning the visit consisted of only one page before the site visitor navigated away from the site entirely. Granted, Inbox checks could account for a portion of that but even with that consideration it's still quite high. One last disturbing fact is Multiply's average page load time, a horrible 77% of the sites reported on by Alexa load faster than Multiply.

Overall it's not a pretty picture. Despite all the Multiply hype about the Marketplace as the salvation of Multiply the numbers tell a different story, in reality site usage has been steadily dropping since the Marketplace became the main focus and the social networking aspect of the site became a non-priority. Sure, Multiply might actually make money from the Online Sellers but I'm not entirely convinced that the increased cash flow will compensate for the decrease in traffic. It's great to make money but if increasingly fewer people are visiting the site and most of them leave immediately after one page view then I have to question the sustainability of the site. I am worried that Multiply continues to waste resources by investing them in the very policies that long term data seems to indicate are primarily responsible for the downward trend.

Slightly off topic, the new CEO is uncommunicative to say the least, there have been no announcements to the user base regarding future plans for the site or any changes to be made. If he'd post to Multiply even a tenth as often as he posts to his Twitter account it would go along way toward relieving the fears expressed by many users. Instead he has abandoned his month old solitairy post to the Staff Blog and the almost 500 comments it has generated. The availability of management and their willingness to communicate with the users have been one of many characteristics that helped make Multiply stand out from the crowd, it would appear that this openness will not be continued by the new management.