This is how much Alexa confuses me

[shasan]

So I downloaded the alexa toolbar at the written behest of a popular 'internet marketer' who shall remain un-exposed in this post.

I went to my site, which hasn't been submitted to anything yet, no back links, nothing, and for some weird reason, I have an alexa rank of 184,000 or somewhere in there.

Now, I went to a semi-competitor's site, with PR4 on google, and their alexa rank was about 700,000... what gives? The only person I know that goes to my website rightnow is me. Sure, I'm working on it all the time, but hopefully that's not the reason.

Anyway, just wondering if someone knew exactly how alexa ranking worked... I don't think I'll put any stock in it.

shasan.

[deejay]

The Alexa toolbar has a small user base.

Your ranking vs your competitor's ranking indicates simply that you have the toolbar installed and your rank has risen from your own visits... and your competitor doesn't.

I find the rankings are useless until you get down under 100,000. Even then they should only be used as corroborative information, and not evidence of traffic in themselves.

<add> actually, useless is too strong. I am still vaguely interested in what the rank is, but I certainly wouldn't go basing any decisions on it. </add>

[shasan]

I was wondering about that. I thought they measured click throughs from search results or something, but it's just the people with alexa installed visiting the site.

that's a pretty bad way to calculate ranking.

thx.
shasan.

[edited by: agerhart at 1:55 am (utc) on Sep. 30, 2003]
[edit reason] please use professional language in the forums [/edit]