Does anyone else feel a little distraught at the fact that Alexa hasn't updated their 3 month ranking in over a month? As little as Alexa supposedly matters because of its innaccuracies, it's used by many people as a benchmark for a site's traffic and popularity. When the heck are they going to udpate? I tried calling them twice but I can't get a human on the phone!!!
Yea, I know Alexa is BS but I still watch it. Ours has said ~24,000 like you said for a while. For the week it is now ~4,000 and I want that to show
its been over 2 weeks now since it has changed and i was slowly respecting alexa ratings more recently maybe they are creating new algorithm
It still doesn't mean much, it's just a spyware meter but I still like seeing growth of my SPM (spyware per million )
Alexa is actually pure BS. I know of a site that has 30 active posters throughout the whole day, that's a pretty active forum in my opinion, and they rank in the 1 millions.
Doesn't mean it can't be glanced at to judge a site's activity. People (I am one of them) often rant on poor Alexa but it does show growth patterns. If you have an increase of traffic, there will be an increase in your SPM therefore the graph will go up. NOTE: Alexa really is trash if you plan on using it for accurate stats rather than a general idea of a site's activity.
I think it's pretty well established that Alexa can give a general guess at a site's traffic but not any specific figures, and that it becomes more relevant for sites ranked in the top 25,000 or so. But it's far, far from trash. Many advertising networks use it to determine acceptance into a program, and it is often the little help we have at estimating a site's traffic. Plus, many individuals look at it when determining partnerships. I care about my Alexa ranking because, accurate or not, it is one of the only public reflections of my site's traffic. If it would ever update, that is.
ALEXA is BS for the simple fact that the rank is only calculated by people who have the toolbar. So... if your site got 1,000,000 uniques per day, and let's say only 2 of the users had the alexa toolbar, what would your rank be? Hmmm.... I also think it's BS that windows live uses the ranking from alexa in their results. It's not accurate and never will be as long as they require the toolbar activity. For instance, 4 months after launching one of my sites, the rank was like just under 200,000. I think it was because a lot of webbies visited the site. Now, 8 months later, and more traffic (6 times more), my site's rank is like 4 million... maybe because all my visitors are normal people without the toolbar.
If you have 1,000,000 people visiting your site, it is highly unlikely only 2 have the Alexa toolbar. It's a decent amount more statistically accurate than that. And yes, there is a bias toward webmasters, so the rankings of web and tech-related sites should not be taken as seriously.
Yeah my Alexa rank hasn't changed a single point in at least 3 weeks. What is the normal update time for the 3 month ranking?
If you want to know how popular a website is, don't count on alexa, unless it's an alexa topic website. Like alexaboost.com or whatever that is... where most or all users have the alexa toolbar. Then you can count on the rank being more accurate. How many regular surfers/general web users do you know to have the alexa toolbar? For the longest time, norton and such would kick their software/toolbar/spyware off computers because it was considered spyware. Besides that... I can setup a small farm of computers (probably like 10), use proxies, delete cookies or whatever, install the toolbars and let them increase my rank by setting my site as home page and viewing the site automatically. Next thing you know, I have just artifically made my site super popular.
Don't ever take Alexa seriously. Or in other words, do not conclude that what it says about your website is true. I just use it as a fun tool. Not very accurate
Alexa isn't a good tool and all but advertisers really use that to determine if your site is worth advertising on.
you cant count on alexa for seo websites. If a site that has anything to do with seo isnt sub 5k then its pretty pathetic... considering those people are way more likely to have the tool bars installed
thats a really good point... sites that look like they suck do suck on alexa. but whats funny is my blog which gets 10-15k uniq a day has a alexa rank of 2500 but another site i have which gets 50-60k uniq a day is like a 7000 alexa.
Yet... that would still have to be based on users with the alexa toolbar. Whether high or low, it's not a "general user" toolbar, rather a webbie toolbar. And webbies are not the masses in the population. I'm now curious to know how many alexa toolbars are actually out there. With all the data that toolbar sends home... they should know every damn thing about their users. So they should have user interest info along with numbers for each type publicly available. Then, you can use the userbase info along with alexa's number to judge with better accuracy.
Did anyone else notice that earlier today ranks had changed? Then they changed back? lol silly alexa... both my toolbar and alexa showed me as ~12,000 then I check later tonight and it was back to ~24,000, odd.