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Alexa (have you installed the toolbar yet?) has added even more interesting functionality to its offering. Traffic details (here are ours) now include estimates of reach per million users and a reach ranking as well as a page views per user count and a total page views ranking. In addition, it is now possible to compare the overall ranking performance of one site against another. (This graph comparing the Lockheed and Northrop-Grumman websites might suggest which company is using the web more effectively!)

Although anyone can see that online advertising has decimated the newspaper's classified ad business, this chart shows why Monster is so broadly perceived to be a problem for CareerBuilder. While the question of whether anyone needs a consolidated national site remains open, the two firms compete for the business. Monster's reach, at 4.3% of Internet users is nearly 3 times Careerbuilder's reach of 1.7%.

The usual caveats apply to Alexa rankings. They're simply the only easy access measurement device around. We'd recommend that you compare a number of sites and get used to using the comparison tool (it's right under the traffic graph in the traffic details page on Alexa). For the time being, it is the best way to assess overall web performance of a vendor.

From here, it looks like SHRM lost ground with the introduction of the net. Their typical audience is only a little more than 50% larger than ours. We're certain that all of their massive membership is online but they'd need to be reaching an audience four or five times its current size. We think that lots of little operations have replaced them.

-John Sumser