disputing review on alexa

can i remove unfair site review on alexa?

[madeonmoon]

Hello All,

Well, someone posted a review on alexa giving my site 1 star and justifying it by "site seems rather pointless...new job sites should be innovative and nitch oriented..."

well, personally, if i don't like a site because of its content, i just click off instead of badmouthing it. the only time i would be tempted to post a bad review for a site if i was spammed by the same multiple times. so, naturally, i am not happy about that posting and i am confident that the dude who posted it will get his karma.

anyway, i tried sending an email to customerservice at amazon dot com (which is listed as the support email for alexa) asking them to remove it to no avail. is there anything else i can do?

best,
james

[sem4u]

Why not ask some of the users of your site if they would like to write a review of your website on Alexa? :)

Even Webmasterworld has some negative reviews on there!

[madeonmoon]

thanks -- that's a good idea. normally, i don't like asking people for favours but i might do it this time.

as for the review i mentioned, it looks especially bad since it is the *only* review at the moment...

[jimh009]

You can always write a couple reviews yourself to fill things in until some normal postiive reviews start rolling in. Also, the person who badmouthed your site could potentially be a competitior of yours.

[anallawalla]

Sticky me your URL and I'll write a positive review if it warrants it or no review.

I'll also say that the other reviewer can't spell (or pronounce) niche. ;)

[sidyadav]

yeah, me too, I'll post something good for you:)
sticky me the URL asap

Sid

[woop01]

Gee, doesn't it amaze you how credible and unmanipulatable (yeah, new word) Alexa is?

[madeonmoon]

The whole idea of having reviews section on a major site such as alexa could potentially be a good thing but there is too much room for abuse by jealous, competitors, bored, etc.

IMO, they would do a good service by taking this service down.

[buckworks]

For what it's worth, my client had exactly 15 referrals from Alexa in the first week of January.

And over ninety thousand from other places.

[madeonmoon]

I consider alexa to be of no use when it comes to traffic referrals. However, it is the only way (as far as I know) for a potential advertiser to check what the traffic on your site is like before buying adspace from you. And while doing it he/she would be presented with reviews.

Only people who have alexa toolbar are tracked for traffic rank purposes but still this meter is better than none..

[Brett_Tabke]

You do realize, that after the first few, only about one out of 50 reveiws are actually added on alexa. They also toss them after a year.

Write Alexa and ask them to review the bogus review.

>better than none

As far as I know, it is the only publicly available web wide traffic measures on the web today.

[figment88]

Brett,

Alexa policies on reviews has recently changed as they have integrated them into Amazon. Is unclear how long they maintain them, and how they add them. In addition, they now seem to edit them.

http://www.metricsmarket.com/ provides public stats that seem much better than Alexa's.

[bcolflesh]

www.webmasterworld.com

Estimated 8,239,500 visitor sessions in the last 30 days.

[Teshka]

There's something to the notion that even bad press is good press, too. I do book reviews for one of my sites, and the couple of books that I've given abysmal ratings to have gotten the highest clickthru rates to Amazon (and yes, some sales).

[mbauser2]

"If you don't have something nice to say, don't say it" may be a popular rule with Miss Manners and her fans, but I don't recall it being in any of the Internet protocol specifications.

Whining about bad reviews just makes you look insecure and petty. Demanding that other sites remove bad reviews just makes you look delusional. You don't have a right (or even a reasonable expectation) to control what opinions people have about your site.

Bad reviews are part of life in a free society. Live with it and move on. It's not like Alexa is that influential anyway.

[sidyadav]

but, I dis-agree with one thing you said:
If its your site, you should have the right to avoid bad publicity going on. Because that site thats having bad publicity spread on YOUR site (ie.Alexa), is becoming popular because of YOUR site, as many people like to criticise more and encourage less, where can they do that? simple, in a site like Alexa.

And many times, competitors spread bad reviews, even though they might think that your site has good content. They just have that jealous feeling going in their head.

What about that? thats unfair ain't it?

I think these "reviewing" sites should only allow good review, which could save discussions like this.

Sid

[mbauser2]

I think these "reviewing" sites should only allow good review, which could save discussions like this.

Yeah, and Roger Ebert should only be allowed to write positive movie reviews, because he'd be nothing without Hollywoood. Get real.

I'm beginning to think there a lot of webmasters who've never been to the real world.

[sidyadav]

whats so special about the real world? all you get is bad stuff.. I've been to the "real world" once or twise maybe, but didn't like it there so decided to comeback to the good world.

;)

Sid

[sem4u]

I have thought twice or even wanted products more after reading product reviews on various websites. I know some are posted by manufacturers/distributors and some are posted by their competitors, but on the whole they can be used to help make a balanced judgement...even if you do eventually go and buy the goods in the real world...

[percentages]

BBS's are BBS's.....and the review section of Alexa is just another BBS/forum/blog, whatever you want to call it today!

The comments are meaningless to those that are likely to see them. The traffic stats ain't a lot better either ;)....but it is all we have to play with right now.

Whether the Alexa posters give you a thumb up, two thumbs up, or two thumbs right up doesn't really matter a hoot in the big picture.....and once viewed that way we will all sleep sound at night :)

[woop01]

I agree with Figment88, the stats on MetricsMarket.com have been a much better guage than Alexas over the two months based on what I've seen in my own sites.

[madeonmoon]

I agree with Figment88, the stats on MetricsMarket.com have been a much better guage than Alexas over the two months based on what I've seen in my own sites.

except for MetricsMarket.com counts bots, i think, while alexa does not

[woop01]

except for MetricsMarket.com counts bots, i think, while alexa does not

Not according to what their site states. Also, they only report visitors, not page views. That's more useful to me than what I found on Alexa.

Neither one of them are perfect but it does give me SOME third-part background on sites I know nothing else about.