Alexa ranking

How accurate is it?

[Umbra]

I work on a website whose Alexa ranking was like a sitting duck. A few months ago, I installed the Alexa Toolbar in my browser. Ever since, the site's ranking has gotten better and better. On the other hand, traffic has actually decreased significantly (thanks to Google's insanes wobbles).

Since I spend so much time with this one website, I have the nagging suspicion that the Alex toolbar in my browser is biasing the Alexa ranking.

This shouldn't be the case, Alexa claims that it can compensate for this sort of situation. But I'm not so sure. Has anybody else experienced this?

[edit_g]

But I'm not so sure. Has anybody else experienced this?

Yeah, Alexa isn't really much good. I've seen this happen with several different sites. I don't use Alexa at all anymore and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when a client mentions it - I know I'm in for a lenghty discussion.

[rogerd]

Umbra, for a low volume site, Alexa rankings will be influenced by small factors, like a webmaster/frequent visitor using the toolbar.

High volume sites are less likely to be influenced by those factors, but may have their own difficulties. A site frequented by webmasters, for example, may show a higher Alexa ranking than a site with similar volume but fewer Alexa users.

I think the Alexa data is interesting and occasionally revealing, but I wouldn't base any business decisions on that info.

[Brett_Tabke]

Had this convo quite a few times before. Help yourself to some reading:

[google.com...]