Odd Conservative Website Ranking Drop Right Before Elections

[ABX]

Notice something unusual about the website rankings for most popular Conservative websites at a time when they should be going up?

*note on the graphs. Higher numbers = lower ratings. 1 would be the highest rating. This is why the higher numbers are at the bottom. The higher the number means the site is trending further and further down in ratings.  Ranking data from Alexa.com

Fox News


Fox News Insider


Drudge


Free Republic


Breitbart.


The Blaze


Zero Hedge


Newsmax


PJ Media


Our own site, GOP Briefing Room



...you get the point.... and all at a time that ratings should be ticking up, in the months before an election.  We have been watching web rankings closely to see the trend of our own site for the past few years and noticed the drastic drop in rankings almost over night. In comparing to the other major conservative political websites, they all experienced the same drop at the exact same time, well out of pattern.

[Relic]

Ok, connect the dots for me. Since this site doesn't do banners, or have click throughs, what would be the benefit of manipulating the data?

And who generates the rankings?

[alicewonders]

This is how they win elections - they lie and cheat.  It's the only way they can win. 

[ABX]

To compare, left sites.

Daily KOS


Huffington Post


MSNBC


SF Gate


The Daily Beast


Village Voice


Mother Jones


Media Matters

[ABX]

Ok, connect the dots for me. Since this site doesn't do banners, or have click throughs, what would be the benefit of manipulating the data?

And who generates the rankings?

Message and organization control. Make it harder to find talking points and organize together if someone is searching via major search engines for one.

Rankings are from Alexa.com which is the main web ranking website.

[jmyrlefuller]

Could it possibly be bots?

It wouldn't be that hard for a set of computers to just continuously refresh a page to drive up page views.

Given that the spikes seem to be following “liberal movement” sites (Kos, MSNBC, Mother Jones, Media Matters) more than sites that just happen to be liberal-leaning (Huffpo, Village Voice), I have a sneaking suspicion that the figures are being seriously manipulated.

ADDED: What I do NOT notice is a lot of increased activity/proliferation of these sites' content elsewhere (such as social media), at least where I've seen it.

[ABX]

Could it possibly be bots?

It wouldn't be that hard for a set of computers to just continuously refresh a page to drive up page views.

Given that the spikes seem to be following “liberal movement” sites (Kos, MSNBC, Mother Jones, Media Matters) more than sites that just happen to be liberal-leaning (Huffpo, Village Voice), I have a sneaking suspicion that the figures are being seriously manipulated.

The thing is the liberal sites don't have a pattern that is out of the ordinary. They are up and down but no major spikes that would indicate a bot driving it up. The ones that are climbing now seem natural for this time of year. Bots would drive up, not sure how they would tank ratings at one time on all those sites.

This would be more along the lines of exclude scripts being injected into search and rankings metrics.

This is doubly odd because Alexa doesn't just use one search engine's rankings, they have an across the board spectrum for setting ratings. It is either being manipulated at Alexa or it is across several search engines (Bing, Google, Yahoo).

[jmyrlefuller]

The thing is the liberal sites don't have a pattern that is out of the ordinary. They are up and down but no major spikes that would indicate a bot driving it up. The ones that are climbing now seem natural for this time of year. Bots would drive up, not sure how they would tank ratings at one time on all those sites.

This would be more along the lines of exclude scripts being injected into search and rankings metrics.

This is doubly odd because Alexa doesn't just use one search engine's rankings, they have an across the board spectrum for setting ratings. It is either being manipulated at Alexa or it is across several search engines (Bing, Google, Yahoo).

Remember, Alexa is a RELATIVE ranking measuring sites against one another. If a site gets a huge spike in traffic, it goes up the rankings, but the other sites each go one notch down for each site that passes them.

[ABX]

The other thing unusual about the drop on all the Conservative sites is it doesn't just impact one type of site. It impacts news sites like Fox, aggregators like Drudge, opinion/alt media sites like The Blaze, and forums like us and FR all the exact same way.

[mystery-ak]

MSNBC

LMAO...in their dreams...

[jmyrlefuller]

MSNBC

LMAO...in their dreams...

Indeed. It doesn't even correlate well with their television ratings, which you would think it should. There is something seriously wrong with the rankings.

[ABX]

Indeed. It doesn't even correlate well with their television ratings, which you would think it should. There is something seriously wrong with the rankings.

Actually, MSNBC always has had a much better web presence than it does TV rankings due to its top placement on the MSN network (now Bing). A lot of news aggregators had high placement for them when they were funneling news to MSN News.

[ABX]

Just to explain... The way the pattern is the same on not just a couple of sites, but all the top sites, no matter what type of site it is (news, aggregator, forum, blog) should make any webmaster jump. Sometimes you will see trends on similar type of sites, like bloggers on a certain platform dropping for a month or forums dropping, but all of these types of sites at the same time really is a head scratcher- especially when looking at left leaning website's rankings for the same period.

[jmyrlefuller]

Actually, MSNBC always has had a much better web presence than it does TV rankings due to its top placement on the MSN network (now Bing). A lot of news aggregators had high placement for them when they were funneling news to MSN News.

I thought they lost a lot of that when they split NBC News and MSNBC apart. Most of the news was driven to nbcnews.com and MSNBC.com basically became the Web site for, well, MSNBC.

[ABX]

I thought they lost a lot of that when they split NBC News and MSNBC apart. Most of the news was driven to nbcnews.com and MSNBC.com basically became the Web site for, well, MSNBC.

They lost the business partnership but they still capitalize on more than a decade of high web rankings.

[DCPatriot]

IMO, the elections in many states will be rigged....like it was in Ohio in 2012.

They will then point to this data as exhibit A...claiming that more Democrat sites are being engaged by the "common man".

...and they 'vote'.   

[240B]

IMO, the elections in many states will be rigged....like it was in Ohio in 2012.

With self declared 'activist' Holder and Obama running the show, voter fraud in this election is going to be off the charts. It has become open and obvious. They don't even try to hide it anymore.
 
Some Dems are even campaigning on a platform of voter fraud. It will be the worst we have ever seen before IMO.

[alicewonders]

With self declared 'activist' Holder and Obama running the show, voter fraud in this election is going to be off the charts. It has become open and obvious. They don't even try to hide it anymore.
 
Some Dems are even campaigning on a platform of voter fraud. It will be the worst we have ever seen before IMO.

I agree.

[Fishrrman]

240b wrote above:
[[ Some Dems are even campaigning on a platform of voter fraud. It will be the worst we have ever seen before IMO. ]]

Until the next election.

Seriously -- what could begin to reverse this?

Could anything?

[Oceander]

Just to explain... The way the pattern is the same on not just a couple of sites, but all the top sites, no matter what type of site it is (news, aggregator, forum, blog) should make any webmaster jump. Sometimes you will see trends on similar type of sites, like bloggers on a certain platform dropping for a month or forums dropping, but all of these types of sites at the same time really is a head scratcher- especially when looking at left leaning website's rankings for the same period.

I agree.  The pattern is too consistent from site to site.