Alexa turns up the geek-value of its charts

Am I the only one to be a little confused over Alexa’s recent changes in the way they present their site view results?

At face value there’s no real difference.

Old

New

What has changed is the y axis.

No longer does is say “Daily Page Views (per million)" but "Daily Page Views (percent)".

This confused the hell out of me at first but I think I understand why they did it. Isn’t it easy to assume, looking at the first, that this graph shows an average of 12 million page views per day?

You certainly couldn’t make that mistake with the new parameter. The problem is, this number, while extremely accurate, makes any kind of presentation particularly taxing on client attention.

"Michael, Just what is this number a percent of and why...?"

Looking at them now you can’t go wrong (and I know I have in the past). It’s just that when showing a client relative values, it helps to have a competitor (or five) to compare them against.

Otherwise you might as well save yourself the trouble.