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Interested to know what is going on and if anyone else is noticing a distinct change in the numbers?
Frank Beier
Sites that I know have increased traffic by 20%-35% have pretty much the same Alexa rating as they did 3 months ago.
I would imagine if Alexa did an Algo change, they might want to phase it in gradually to keep down the complaints. There have been some changes over at Alexa in the past few months where there haven't been changes for years, so maybe this is the case.
For the record, please don't let this degrade into an "Alexa is for stupid people" thread.... If you understand how Alexa works and it's limitations, the information you can get from them is invaluable for internet marketing and can not be attained on such a grand scale so easily by any other method.
Anyway, the results are easy to trick. Load the toolbar (if you dare) and visit your site every day and click on lots of pages. That probably explains how some companies have increased but overall... with the amount of people getting rid of the toolbar also can explain drop in numbers
It's all a crock anyway.
Exactly the opposite. The results are totally based on their toolbar making it the most inaccurate useless stat on the web although there are a few that put emphasis on it. Doesn't mean a thing regarding amount of traffic.
For the record, please don't let this degrade into an "Alexa is for stupid people" thread....
Of course I've read the anecdotal evidence. You know, the posts that say "I installed the Alexa toolbar, visited my web site and clicked refresh 1,000 times and now my Alexa rating is below 10,000." In my own experience, I haven't seen anything close to this being possible.
You want to hear anecdotal evidence? Ok, in my experience, the people that I've known that hate Alexa are either trying to sell "high-traffic, established web sites" on eBay which have an Alexa rating of "No Data", or they don't understand the difference between hits and visitors.
While there is plenty of evidence that would suggest all of these statements are true, they really aren't given facts. But more importantly, this is not what this discussion is about.
Alexa is a tool in my toolbox. It's not the only tool I have, but if I didn't have it, I would certainly miss it as it plays a role unlike any other tool that is available. As for it being a the most useless stat on the web, what other stat is available for this information? I guess you could email each webmaster and ask how much traffic their web site gets, but I would bet that would be even more inaccurate/useless.
As stated previously, if you understand how Alexa works, and it's limitations, it is an invaluable tool.
I would love to have an objective discussion on how Alexa ratings can be skewed. Of course it's possible, but on a grand scale? I see the web sites that sell scripts to boost Alexa ratings, but I've never seen one with a good Alexa rating. Like Google, Alexa changes their ranking algo from time to time. This discussion is about one of those changes. This all makes for good conversation, but I'm tired of these conversations being high-jacked from people who shoot from the hip with statements that contain little factual evidence.
Please let us get on with our discussion.
One other note of interest. I see that Google is now indexing around 8 bilion plus pages. I wonder if there is a direct correlation to the alexa numbers becuase of the increased number of pages in Google.
I have noticed that my sites continue to be in the same percentile ranking, but the number is proportional to the numbers in Google.
I wonder if Alexa will alter their results for the top 100,000 to a more accurate system that might also include, "Site in the top 1/10,000th percentile"?
So you think only your opinion is logical/factual?
I have installed the toolbar along with some employees and our numbers did drop by half within days. Also our page views went through the roof. That was enough for us to discount Alexa's importance as a ranking tool. You are welcome to your opinion but don't trash others.
As for the toolbar....the hardest thing I've ever tried to delete of my computer. It has a sneaky way of coming back.
Just my opinion....and I'm done with this thread
Looking at my stats - I have one site with an average of around 55,000 which I think is reasonably accurate. A couple of days ago it dropped to 250,000+ and now shows nothing. Except, in real life traffic is waaay up. (For the record that's an average of 4,100 visitors per day, 23,000 page views).
Another site has shown a slight increase in traffic recently, (average 1,200 uniques per day, 5,400 page views) and yet the Alexa ranking has recently shifted from 110,000 to 35,000.
Looking at other sites in my industry sector, there have been some other huge and unexpected moves over the past couple of days. I'm putting this down to some sort of bug at the Alexa end.
I do not think that Alexa gives you the number of visitors. Alexa gives other figures.
If you are looking at the reach rank, what it is telling you is this. If your rank is 1.3 per million, it is telling you your site is reaching 1.3 people per million internet users. Thus, if there are 200 million US users, you are actually exposing your site to around 260 people per day, week, month, three months.
This is not a perfect scenario of how many people are visiting your site, but rather a scenario of person A visiting your site and telling person B about your site and forwarding your address to them.
Frank Beier
