[Wikide-l] Alexa - rankings differenciated among users from different countries

[Mathias Schindler]

Alexa has now a new feature, at least it took me until today to discover 
it. At http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500, you will find a list of 
countries. Alexa is providing a list of web sites that Alexa believes 
them to be popular in that country. It is still not clear what the data 
basis for Alexas charts is. The most likely source is its toolbar which 
appears to have a feature that phones back to Alexa.

I have compiled a list of wikipedia's rank in the different countries, 
both sorted by ISO country code and sorted by the rank. When a country 
did not have wikipedia.org among its TOP 100 (pretty rare these days, 
might even be an indication of being blocked in some cases), it is 
marked as XX.

Data retrieved on April 14, 2006:

Sorted by ISO country code (and by Alexa's standards what a country 
might be)
AE  39
AR  19
AT  08
AU  15
BE  15
BG  16
BH  45
BR  27
CA  12
CH  08
CL  21
CO  10
CR  25
CY  29
CZ  17
DE  07
DK  28
DO  27
EG  57
ES  14
ES  32
FI  16
FR  13
GB  12
GR  22
HK  97
HR  18
HU  24
IE  13
IL  13
IN  21
IR  27
IS  17
IT  13
JO  42
JP  30
KR  XX
KW  57
LB  73
LT  19
MA  35
MX  13
MY  18
NL  12
NO  17
NZ  08
OM  19
PE  15
PH  21
PK  10
PL  09
PR  12
PS  55
PT  11
QA  73
RO  12
RU  25
SA  XX
SE  21
SG  16
SI  18
SK  15
SY  42
TH  86
TR  45
TW  XX
UA  21
UK  12
US  14
VE  26
VN  67
YE  40
ZA  13
ZH  XX


Same list, sorted by the rank itself:

07 DE
08 AT
08 CH
08 NZ
09 PL
10 CO
10 PK
11 PT
12 CA
12 GB
12 NL
12 PR
12 RO
12 UK
13 FR
13 IE
13 IL
13 IT
13 MX
13 ZA
14 ES
14 US
15 AU
15 BE
15 PE
15 SK
16 BG
16 FI
16 SG
17 CZ
17 IS
17 NO
18 HR
18 MY
18 SI
19 AR
19 LT
19 OM
21 CL
21 IN
21 PH
21 SE
21 UA
22 GR
24 HU
25 CR
25 RU
26 VE
27 BR
27 DO
27 IR
28 DK
29 CY
30 JP
32 ES
35 MA
39 AE
40 YE
42 JO
42 SY
45 BH
45 TR
55 PS
57 EG
57 KW
67 VN
73 LB
73 QA
86 TH
97 HK
XX KR
XX SA
XX TW
XX ZH


A couple of months ago, Kate gave some similar data about the 
distribution of web site requests among countries in relation to its 
population (or something like that, I can't find the URL at the moment). 
At a first glimpse at the data, I find it plausible. I also feel 
satisfied to see three countries with a large share of German speaking 
population at a top of that list (I hope this is not just because the 
level of infestation with alexa sp^wphonehomeware is particulary high 
there :)).

Mathias