PingedIn Update: Explaining MessageLabs Chart

Scott Chasin of MX Logic called to mention that our numbers for MX Logic seemed off (see the original post). Indeed they were. MX Logic is in fact doing better now than it was back in the summer. Google, however, is still moving way off the charts.

Some people also asked why the MessageLabs chart moves all over the place — or indeed why any of the numbers move all over the place. The reason is that, for efficiency reasons, the PingedIn system only tries a certain number of times to contact the mail servers for each company in the database. If the DNS is slow, or not functioning for a particular domain, or if the receiving mail server doesn’t want to talk to us, then we that ping is not recorded in the database, causing a downward blip in the chart.

Here’s the new graph — thanks to all of you who commented on the previous post: