can someone expllain alexa to me

[Carl05]

is it better to have a higher number or a lower number

cheers

[Crazy_Rob]

Doesn't matter because Alexa is bullshit!

(lower = more popular)

[WebNirvana]

Lower number.

[Carl05]

just cant work it out
i have 2 sites, one with a 64k rating and one that gets about 6 times the traffic thats a 1.5m rating

[WebNirvana]

The traffic only accounts for those using the Alexa toolbar. Alexa Rank is worthless.

[Carl05]

if its worthless, how come so many people use it ??
i can work it out, but i will go with the lower the better theory

cheers all

[Crazy_Rob]

...i can work it out, but i will go with the lower the better theory



Huh? It's not a theory, that's how it works.

How are Alexa's traffic rankings determined?
Common Questions

Alexa's traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period. A site's ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and pageviews. Reach is determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day. Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single pageview. The site with the highest combination of users and pageviews is ranked #1.

Alexa's traffic rankings are for top level domains only (e.g. domain.com). We do not provide seperate rankings for subpages within a domain (e.g. www.domain.com/subpage.html) or subdomains (e.g. subdomain.domain.com) unless we are able to automatically identify them as personal home pages, like those hosted on Geocities and Tripod. If a site is identified as a personal home page, its traffic ranking will have an asterisk (*) next to it: Personal Page Avg. Traffic Rank: 3,456*. Personal pages are ranked on the same scale as a regular domain, so a personal page ranked 3,456* is the 3,456th most popular page among Alexa users.

For more detailed information about Alexa's traffic rankings, please visit http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/traffic_learn_more.html.

[CosmosCR]

lol considering google is 3.. and your sites are 60,000 - 1,000,000 id say you dont need the FAQ to know lower is better. ( no offense to you Rob, but to the people who actually needed you to post that ;P )

[Cristian Mezei]

is it better to have a higher number or a lower number

Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/) is a website that ranks websites, based on the data sent by users who have the Alexa toolbar installed (or other browser plugins that use Alexa data, like the popular Search Status (http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/) plugin).

The data Alexa presents is fairly incomplete, because not all the visitors have the Alexa toolbar installed, and while a website with more of a webmaster niche approach will have all it's visitors with the Alexa toobar installed, a basic user website, will have almost none of it's visitors with it.

So it's a fake estimations.

Less (as rank goes) is good.

[maldives]

is it better to have a higher number or a lower number

cheers
It is not something you choose to have!! ;) They give ranking based on traffic you receive!

It is just an indication nothing else.

[madferit]

Lower, but the results are worthless.

[john2006]

Lower, but the results are worthless.

No, they're not. While the results might be inaccurate at times, they do show a trend and combined with link popularity, PR, page content, site updates, metricsmarket.com and all other tools you get a global picture as how a site is (probably) doing. This can be useful if you want to buy a site and you have some doubts whether you should trust the traffic numbers. Like I said, no tool is reliable to get a global picture of actual traffic, but with 10 sources pointing in the same direction you play it much safer than simply trusting some traffic screenshots that can easily be faked.

Just my $0,02

[cj1223]

lowers better, i used to think higher was better because my first free website toollab.tripod.com has a ranking in the lower 300. Once i bought a paid host i realized that lower is better, and alexa for some reason counts lycos. I agree there bullshit, i never cared what my alexa rank was because my pr was always 0, i think that's a little more important.

[john269]

Alexa is not accurate at all. You should use it to determine on how much traffic a site is getting that you don't own. It can give you a little indication on how well a site may be doing but most of the results are inaccurate.