Orkut Grew by 60% in the Last 3 Months! Really?

You gotta be kidding me, Google! Of all the things alive, kicking and buzzing around, how on earth Orkut grew by a whopping 60% since October 2010? Well, Google hasn’t explicitly released this data, but their online tools indicate that. Check out the growth graph for Orkut.com according to Google adplanner before be dissect it in detail.

I generally find Google ad planner more accurate than other services like Alexa & Compete in tracking the general performance of a website. As the screenshot above indicates, the data tracked on the graph is only an estimation, but they are usually accurate at-least in terms of the general trends, if not the actual numbers. They depend upon the cookies set (by Adsense?) to gauge the Daily Unique Visitors.

Funny thing is, according to the adplanner graph for Orkut, Daily Unique Visitors are constantly increasing since Jan 2009, where it was less than 10 million. It grew to almost 30 million in October 2010 and by December, it had touched 50 million unique visitors per day! Ironically, both Alexa and Compete tell a completely contrasting story.

The data for Orkut.com on Google Trends for Websites matches with that of adplanner, as they appear to be using the same source.

I don’t claim to be an expert analyst, when it comes to web analytics. so would love to know and understand how the data can vary so significantly across analytics services. The general buzz around Orkut over the past couple of years has been pretty negative, even in Brazil and India, which have been it’s prominent user base. For all the money, I would have bet against any growth for Orkut in the past year, but this has turned the tables, just a bit. Can we assume the data is flawed? or did a miracle happen for sure?