Alexa Ranking

[hurricane_sh]

Recently I uninstalled Alexa due to some annoying bugs, then when I check the daily traffic rank, it's often "no data" for today, that means only me installed Alexa of my visitors, and my site ranked 110000. I'm really shocked at the results and didn't expect too few Alexa users. According to my site's traffic history, 5-10 reach per million users, I think Alexa has at most half million users. If Alexa has more users in the past, it must be affected by Google or Yahoo's toolbar.

If there are two Alexa users access your website every day, it will enter top 100000 very easily. If there are three, it will enter 50000.

[minstrel]

I wouldn't worry a lot about it. The Alexa rankings are pretty much meaningless, really... there is a major sampling error problem given that the data is drawn only from visitors who have the toolbar installed, excluding large numbers of internet users. It's also rather easy to manipulate the data, at least in the short term.

[dave conz]

Here's how accurate Alexa is

[minstrel]

Excellent article!

Add to that the inherent sampling errors problem and the conclusion of the article

This clearly shows that the Alexa rankings have no statistical validity.

There are also more factors which further decrease the accuracy of these statistics, such as the fact that only relatively advanced internet users ("techie types") are likely to install the toolbar in the first place.

Summary
The Alexa website traffic monitoring system is so inaccurate as to be worse than useless - it is very misleading. Perhaps most concerning is that it is trivially easy for website owners to manipulate their own rankings. We recommend that you do not take Alexa seriously.

is hard to dispute.

[kiwidesigner]

Yep I used to think Alexa rankings were quite important but not anymore - they're so "flakey" with their results.

Karen

[UKZJ007]

Its a shame still that alot of people judge a site by its Alexa Rank, and go as far as saying (as in my case once), "Sorry your Alexa Rank is high enough, I cant trade links"

[LuckyPimp]

I have had potential advertisers turn away becuase I had a lower Alexa ranking on one of my sites. I just laughed it off because I didn't want to take the time to explain how it works.

[verna]

so are there any tool which you can monitor your site traffic?

[GuyFromChicago]

Originally Posted by LuckyPimp

I have had potential advertisers turn away becuase I had a lower Alexa ranking on one of my sites. I just laughed it off because I didn't want to take the time to explain how it works.

Should have just used the tool you promote in your signature

[JuggoPop]

2004 - 2005 - 2006... lets only hope we can bump this thread in the future years.

[Manish Pandey]

Yes.. they are certainly of no use... you could better use your own web stats if you have cpanel...

[spyderscripts]

"Yes.. they are certainly of no use."

Not true.

Sites that display how popular they are with the Alexa site ranking icon (if the site is within the top 100k) will gain a higher increase in return visitors and inbound links from other web masters.

It can be useful to manipulate traffic by showing them your site is highly traffic'd, but for other purposes I'd agree the Alexa ranking means nothing.

[sixty6]

I still think that some people do use Alexa as a grading tool, not knowing how weak it is....

One of the reasons why I have it installed on IE and set my arcade as the homepage (I made IE startup with the computer too )