I have a couple of tool bars for Alexa rank monitoring, one is for Firefox and the other is for Internet Explorer. Since last night, both have jumped back and forth between 2 different ranks for my site. Depending on which page I land on the rank is one of two numbers. If I use Alexa.com or software that checks page rank, popularity, etc. my site rank is the lower of the two, but both tool bars for both browsers jump back and forth between the former (higher) and the newer (lower) rank. I have only been aware of Alexa.com for 2 months, and this is the first time this has happened (numbers flip-flopping). Is this normal?
Alexa is not a great ranking tool, it only ranks sites by the people who use the toolbar. I don't believe the toolbar is real time, in a few days it will update with the correct rank.
Thanks for the reply. I have read various pros and cons for Alexa ranking but it is the only one I am aware of that gives me some visual indication of upward movement of my site.
Try Compete (www.compete.com) or Quantcast (www.quantcast.com) for more reliable competitive traffic statistics. While not perfect, their methodologies for collecting data are superior. To track your own progress, start with Google's free website analytics tool. The price is right and it's surprisingly easy to use.
hey, great tools. thanks for the heads up. i am going to have to take some time and read thoroughly all of the great information i have found here.
By the way, where do the rankings that say Google is #2 and Yahoo! is #1 come from? I find various ranking sources when I do an internet search but where do news sources like the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today get their ranking information?