Hi, I have something that has been bother me for a while. In regards to the geographic distribution of all by website visitors, according to google analytics, the vast majority of my visitors are from the U.S. (about 38&). Canada and the UK come in second and third, respectively, then India (at just 3% of total visits). The problem is that Alexa and similar sites often rank the U.S. first, then India second (at more than 20% of total visits) and then Canada and the UK not even in the top 5. Sometimes they Rank India higher than the U.S., which is absurd. My website is in my signature. Does anyone know what the problems? Could this be a symptom of something serious wrong, potentially affecting my overall traffic? To get an idea of what I'm talking about, just look at this stats page: http://autotribute.com.hypestat.com/
First you need to understand how Alexa works, Alexa ranks sites based on tracking information of users of its "Alexa Toolbar" so your website is ranked by visitors who have Alexa Toolbar installed in their browser. Google Analytics is a JavaScript based traffic analysis tool, that means Google Analytics counts every visits (Alexa Toolbar only counts visits by visitors who have the Alexa toolbar installed in their browser)
Google and Alexa may use different criteria to determine the country of origin of a user. Some methods might be the IP address or perhaps user supplied data such as when a user signed up for an account on Google or Alexa. If they use different methods then that could account for the difference in breakdown. Here is a discussion about how differences could occur when using the IP address to identify the country of the user. http://www.webmasterworld.com/analytics/3557009.htm
Not sure why anyone really pays attention to Alexa rankings. Google Analytics gives you more than enough info.
It's not just Alexa -- it's all the other sites that measure website performance, like the one linked in my original post. I'm guess what you guys said applies to them too? It's just weird how most, if not all, of them keep stating that India is either the number one or two in regards to my website traffic source. It can't be.
The above answers are correct, bear in mind that India is a booming technological economy, so those users there may be more likely to have the alexa toolbar installed. IMO use your google analytics as the benchmark for website traffic, not alexa, this is not a very accurate tool and I can't see why people spend so much time analysing it