While reviewing a list of my link partners on one of the prominent search engines I noticed a link from Alexa.com so I clicked the link and ultimately found my home page url posted along with a line up of traffic statistics which included my web sites: 01-Overall Traffic Ranking 02-Reach % per Million users Ranking and my 03-Page Views Ranking Of course I was happy to see that my url jumped some 100K+ spots in traffic rankings over the past 30-days and some 30-40% in it's reach rank and it provided me with an interesting comparison with a number of my competitors and "related sites" but my question would be how accurate is this info and is it useful in anyway to generating additional traffic to my web site..? If the stats are not reliable is there some resource available on the net that provides accuarte web site ranking info that can be accessed at little or no cost..? Thanks in advance for any feedback...
Alexa data are not very reliable, for one because the toolbar that transmits usage data to Alexa only supports Internet Explorer on Windows. Second, the Alexa user base is only a sample of the Internet population, and sites with relatively low traffic will not be accurately ranked due to the statistical limitations of the sample. Alexa's data come from a sample of several million Alexa Toolbar users; however, this is not large enough to accurately determine the rankings of sites with fewer than roughly 1,000 total monthly visitors. Generally, Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data we receive is not statistically significant. Conversely, the more traffic a site receives (the closer it gets to the number 1 position), the more reliable its Traffic Ranking becomes. It does, however, provide a nice meaning for you to compare your site with those of your competitors, especially over time and if you limit your comparison to the 3 months average statistics.
Thanx for your reply Celt... My site does receive significantly more than 1,000 views per day and I've noticed from one of my url traffic tracking services that I do receive some hits from the "Alexa.com ranking page". I think the whole idea they have is a good one even if it involves only a few million tool bar users. I would guess that the "Google toolbar" might be even more popular but I haven't found these kind of Alexa type stats offerred by Google or anyone else... What I'm wondering is have you found or are you aware of any service like Alexa provides that would be more accurate with these type of web site ranking statistics..?
NO Alexa is good for what it is, some webmasters will probably repeatedly click their own sites to try and improve rankings (with the alexa toolbar installed) however if you rank well and are improving, then thats a good measure, if you are not cheating........as some are, and you are beating them aswell. where do you currently rank?
I don't know of any other service that ranks you in comparison to other sites at large either. Brandon
THE LATEST STATS ARE AS FOLLOWS: Traffic Rank for 1800sunstar.com (what's this) 507,333 +107,851 Reach for 1800sunstar.com : (what's this) Reach per million users: Today 1 wk. Avg. 3 mos. Avg. 3 mos. Change -- 1.5 1.9 +65% Page Views for 1800sunstar.com: (what's this) Page Views per user: Today 1 wk. Avg. 3 mos. Avg. 3 mos. Change -- 1.0 1.6 No Change I have to admit that recently I have also been using the Alexa stats in helping to determine who the more desirable "link partners" might be as well. I>E: less likely to go with a site ranked in the millions but more likely to go with a link in the sub-million rank catagory. How about you?
Try this: http://www.statbrain.com/ Still in development I believe - no guarantees of accuracy, but a great idea.
Nice find e10... I just happened to go to Alexa this morning before checking in to see your link to Statbrain. Looks like their stats match my site traffic tracker on average hits per day as well. Here's what I got this morning: --------------------------------------- Alexa Traffic rank: Avg. 3 mos. Change 491,739 +147,298 --------------------------------------- Statbrain.com Estimated number of visitors for 1800sunstar.com: 5,392 visitors per day Background info Alexa traffic rank 491739 --------------------------------------- I figure the more coroborating stats the better..! Thanks again...
I like the idea too, but unfortunately it's not very accurate. Statbrain estimates an nice number of daily visitors for my site, but in reality I get just about one percent of that... Maybe they're confusing visitors with hits
They rank too high for sites I have tried too but it is in development, it´s a great idea and I really would love to see it become a reliable and accurate tool. Give the guy your feedback. There is an email for that on the site.
Alexa is completely unaccurate. Only the very top few are actually accurate - I have seen many cases of sites being inside the top 100,000 and the results still being completely inaccurate. Only the first few thousand can be accurate at all in my opinion... *Now accepting clients that want a massive Alexa boost* kiddin
Just found another one of those rare Ranking stat services at: http://ranking.com/ Interestingly enough a comparison of all three stat reports are pretty analagus. Hmmm... Here's how the numbers from all three services I researched compare for my website's ranking this past week: --------------------------------------- [Ranking.com] on 041505 Domain Web Rank: 1800sunstar.com 498,935 Unique Visitors: 4,756 --------------------------------------- [Alexa.com] on 040905 Traffic rank: 1800sunstar.com 491,739 Avg. 3 mos. Change: +147,298 --------------------------------------- [Statbrain.com] on 041105 Estimated number of visitors for 1800sunstar.com: 5,392 visitors per day --------------------------------------- Be curious to know if anyone else runs the numbers on their URL's if they find any congruity...
For anyone interested... The web site owner of one of the three ranking services: "statbrain.com" which I used in my 8-day comparison study on "website ranking" has a thread on the DP forum. (linked below) I've given him direct feedback on his very useful ranking tool and I'm sure he'd appreciate "feedbck" from anyone else who has used the service. One of the best Google Adsense tips ever: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?postid=148386#poststop