Which is better? Google PR or the Alexa Rank?

As I am very new to the world of web design, I wrote an article on my blog site <http://whitleyjournalism.co.uk> asking my viewers to vote between Google and Alexa for sizing up websites.

Let me know what you think on the blog article <http://tinyurl.com/4amwrm> or simply post a quick reply with your thoughts.

I look forward to your reply, and remember, I'm not exactly a web genius so be nice!

Kind regards,
Joe

 

Well I can say this about PR compared to Alexa...

Two years ago I had a site with PR5 and high alexa and it got very little traffic... that same site is now PR3 and has a lower alexa rank and has more traffic than ever. So if you were to ask me which I prefer, I would definitely have to say give me the alexa rank...

 

between PR and alexa rank, i rather have higher alexa

 

Which is better - a hammer or a saw?

 

Thanks for all the input guys.

@ Phynder - so you're of the belief that they are too different to compare? Fair enough point my friend

 

@ HachimitsuBiz and pctec - I too prefer a higher Alexa Rank. Mine is rising all the time, and I'm really happy. How are yours going?

 

PageRank is a representation of the amount of links pointing to a website, nothing else. You could have spammed a million guestbooks and those links would be included in the calculation of PageRank.

Alexa measures how many people WHO HAVE THE ALEXA TOOLBAR INSTALLED visit your site on a regular basis. And since no one but webmasters care about that toolbar, it's just SLIGHTLY biased.

Just shoot yourself now and spare us all of the horrors.

 

You do mean getting lower don't you? The lower the better for alexa
I am still trying to get an alexa of "25"... HA!

 

Yeah - sorry. Haha, I'd love a rank of 25! I'm only at about 580,000

 

That's a bit harsh - I did say I'm not exactly knowledgeable when it comes to web design didn't I?

 

Interesting discussion that I haven't read much about until now.
For my interests, Google PR seems to bring more search engine traffic, as a higher ranking means just that.
As for Alexa, those stats never did anything for me.
Your mileage may vary, of course.

 

Good points you two. Thank you for your thoughts

 

@ Abel1337 - I agree with you, but I doubt I have the expertise to give you a reliable answer

 

I would rather have a higher PR... Alexa can be easily manipulated (anyone can download the Alexa toolbar and refresh their site everyday - and have their friends do it as well) and thus the Alexa ranking will be affected.. It takes a lot more time and effort to get a high PR...

 

Id go with higher pr because that means your site has authority while alexa ranking is only determined by people who have the alexa toolbar installed so its inaccurate

 

I suppose you're right. How are your ranks coming along?

 

Most people dont know what alexa is... as if your rank goes down based on how good your site is or whatever...

whats better pr10 or #1 in alexa, definetly #1 in alexa as alexa is basically a traffic counter, to achieve a low number means your getting high traffic, traffic makes money and although pr might also make money for some traffic is still more money.

So for all of you who dont understand, if you have an alexa rank of 50,000 you most likely have alot more traffic then someone with alexa of 250,000

 

As mentioned before the alexa toolbar is only installed by webmasters. Nobody in the real world knows or cares about it. Forget the alexa rank. Work on your PageRank. If a million people a day are visiting your site you would know about it in your logs and conversion, who cares about alexa? Only other webmasters trying to compare your site to theirs. Get your backlinks and that will increase the PR and hopefully increase the traffic anyway. It's a chicken or egg scenario and in this case PR is definitely the more important factor as you have to work to attain it (even if does mean submitting to lots of directories or posting in forums). Whether you know your alexa rank or not does not matter. If visitors are coming then they are coming. If they are not, watching the alexa bar is not going to do anything for you. At all

 

Neither, all that matters is what kind of traffic you are receiving and how well it is converting.

 

Alexa rank, by FAR. PR just means you have other high PR sites linking to you, which is pretty much worthless. A high Alexa ranking means the site is receiving high volumes of traffic, which of course = $$$.