Alexa

[Help Desk]

Does anybody put any weight into the ranking that Alexa give's websites?

Is there any other services that give this information out freely?

[Such Great Heights]

Originally Posted by ThinkBling

Does anybody put any weight into the ranking that Alexa give's websites?

Is there any other services that give this information out freely?

No, and ... I don't think so.

From what I've read from others, Alexa is only good for comparisons. So comparing your domain to your competition's will give you a better understanding than just your domain. Since Alexa only gets their info from people who download their toolbar their info isn't the most accurate. Plus take into consideration your target market maybe completely different than those who actually download the Alexa toolbar. (ie. security/anonymous web surfers, might be your taget market, but they'd be very unlikely to download a toolbar that tracks their page visits.)

HTH
- Sean

[stephfoster]

I don't take it seriously either. As Sean said, the target market may not be the same in many cases. It's also too easily manipulated. I read a case on one website or another where the owner installed the Alexa toolbar, then visited every page on his site for a few months, bringing his Alexa ranking up from 6 digits to the 30,000s somewhere. It's just too easy to fake it.

[T0PS3O]

I never understood how to read those graphs on the Alexa stats page for a given site.

Hitwise publish some stats occasionally like in their news reports here http://www.hitwise.co.uk/ss/inthenews.html , pay for their service and you can choose which stats you want to see. But again it's not 100% accurate yet a lot better than alexa because they base it on surfing behaviour as mined by some big ISP's. The news sections always seem to report Travel & Accomodation though and not any industry I'm interested in myself.

[digitalpoint]

Alexa traffic data is pretty useless... digitalpoint.com is about 1,000 these days, and it's still useless.

[compar]

Ok so someone could spam Alexa and distort the figures, but putting that possiblity aside Alexa data is exactly what it reports to be. It is the relative popularity of web sites loaded by people who are using the toolbar, nothing more and nothing less.

Now the people who use the toolbar would tend to be webmaster and other people involved in the industry. So the browsing habit are typical of this sub group of all Internet surfers. But even webmaster and SEO gurus are still people and some of their browsing habits will be reflective of the general population.

Remember also that Amazon has now purchased Alexa and are using it in some manner in conjunction with their search engine -- A9.

I don't understand why Alexa gets bad mouthed as much as it does. They are very upfront about what they do and what they represent.

[digitalpoint]

Well it shouldn't be badmouthed. But it's nothing more than a toy.

[compar]

Originally Posted by digitalpoint

Well it shouldn't be badmouthed. But it's nothing more than a toy.

My point Shawn is, that it is what it is. It doesn't claim to be the definitive measure of web traffic. They claim a lot of installs -- like in excess of a million I think -- so it is a sampling of web browsing and to the degree that web masters are also people it has to reflect something.

The problem is not with Alexa. The problem is with people who don't take the time to find out what the source of the measurement is and are looking for something for nothing.

Are you suggesting that Alexa should withdraw their tool because someone might use it incorrectly or draw the wrong conclusions from the data?

[digitalpoint]

Nope, not at all... I think Alexa is a fun tool. I just wouldn't put any weight on it for being the "word of god" as far as traffic measurement.

[Help Desk]

My site, www.ThinkBling.com went from not even making the top 100,000 one day to being ranked 17,906th on the next.

Alexa's ThinkBling.com ranking...

It would be great if that was true!!!! Just think about all the AdSense revenue!

[Owlcroft]

compar has it nailed: it's a tool, one whose use is clear and clearly explained, and its usefulness is up to each user to determine for himself or herself, based on those clear explanations.

For myself, I look in on it occasionally. It can be interesting, and possibly insightful, to compare Alexa's traffic numbers for sites ahead of one's own in the Google SERPs. If a site with quite low traffic is well ahead of you, what do they have that you don't? (Links, probably, but that's the idea: you can look and see.)

The bottom line that we want is not SERPs, it's traffic. Obviously, high SERPs have a strong effect in driving traffic, but the relation is certainly not 1:1. I would not expect Alexa's traffic rank to be terribly exact, but I think that a site rated #300,000 can safely be assumed to have materially less traffic than one rated #30,000, which is to say it's not an exact tool, but it does tell one something.

[mxlabs]

Personally, I didn't have a look at alexa for maybe 2 years now. It was a nice tool when I used to buy sites to judge the traffic of domains that had a pr0 and were registered 3 months ago, but not more.

I don't think its data is very precise... But after all it's free to use or not to use

[Help Desk]

Points noted. Does anybody have a better alternative? Digital Point's tools are great! I'm looking for more kinds.

[compar]

Originally Posted by ThinkBling

Points noted. Does anybody have a better alternative? Digital Point's tools are great! I'm looking for more kinds.

What exactly do you want to know?

There are no tools or services that I know that will report the exact traffic to all the web sites in the world. There are none other than Alexa that even attempt to give a relative measure of traffic.

If you want to know how much traffic your competitor gets the only real choice you have is to ask him. And his answer will be a lot less reliable than Alexa.

And then how do you measure traffic? Is it unique visitors? Is it page views? Is it the time someone stays on your site? Is it some type of conversion rate? Is it the number of people who bookmark your page? is it the number of people who recommend you to a friend? Is it the number of times a person revisits?

The point I'm making is that nobody is going to give you this information because to start with there isn't even a standard for the measurement.

[Help Desk]

Originally Posted by compar

There are none other than Alexa that even attempt to give a relative measure of traffic.

That was the response that was looked for.

Does anybody know what information Google's search bar sends to Google? It is realized that they do not report on it, but does that mean that no information is collected?

[Bernard]

If you are using Alexa data to make decisions on advertising or domain/site purchases, you might consider asking the webmaster of the target sight to install one of those free, on-line tracking systems (like eXTReMe tracking) for a day or a week to verify the actual traffic.

[Help Desk]

Is there any simple ones that include an .htaccess file change? Most would hate to have to update every page and many do not have access to install packages on their web server.

[Bernard]

The point of suggesting one of the free online trackers is to allow for independent verification. You could always ask them for some reports from their referrer logs, but then you have no way to know if they fudged anything.

I'm not aware of any free online trackers that do not require inserting some code on the page. That doesn't mean one doesn't exist though. Sorry I can't help you there.

[compar]

Originally Posted by ThinkBling

Does anybody put any weight into the ranking that Alexa give's websites?

Is there any other services that give this information out freely?

I just discovered a link to a site called ranking.com . They purport to supply traffic details about web sites.

I haven't investigated thoroughly. Does anybody know anything about this service?

[T0PS3O]

I just had a look. For one of our sites it says we get 4700 uniques a month. Our own stats say between 700 and 1000 uniques a day with between 40 and 120 returning visiotrs based on cookies. Seems to me that the data is way off and well below actual figures.

This site is also 1 on their Trust Gauge scale. "The patent-pending TrustGauge is the quickest and easiest way to determine if the website you are visiting is trustworthy."

NICE! Great technology, I wonder what they base it on.

This is what they say about Trust Gauge level 1: "Lacks most basic contact information; recognized as "listed" but with the lowest possible score."

Which is funny because full address details, e-mail and telephone and fax is displayed on each of our 1500+ pages plus a contact us page 1 link away from each of these pages including the main page. Very smart technology indeed.