Adlinks effects Alexa ranking

Saw this on my site today

[clearvision]

I have the Alexa toolbar on my computer (I confess :) and it displayed my site at "29" in rankings. There is NO WAY my site could have raised that quickly from mid 50,000. I clicked it to find it was grabbing the information from , the pagead2.googlesyndication.com. I clicked on my company name which they displayed as the site and it opened a full page with only my 5 adlinks ads listed. Strange?

Has this happened to anyone else? Why is this happening.

[elguapo]

Because Alexa s*u*c*k*s?

[clearvision]

I understand completely what alexa is ;) I was just noticing that it is indexing a site on adlinks code and is considering this code its own individual page.

[esllou]

well, exactly. One of the thousand reasons it S.U.C.K.S.

which was the answer you were given.

[incrediBILL]

Does Alexa drive traffic to your site?

Does your income depend on Alexa?

If the answer is NO to the questions above then why are we discussing this topic and wasting bandwidth about such a meaningless web site as Alexa?

[dutch_dude]

I have adlinks too, but have not experienced this.

About Alexa: it is cool and decently accurate. Just accept it can never be 100% accurate and it gives valuable information for free. I really don't understand all the crying babies when the subject is Alexa.

[clearvision]

Sorry

Actually....No I am not sorry.

I asked a simple question because there are webmasters that frequent this forum who check these stats as a way to gauge the GENERAL well being of a website. Whether they are buying advertising or just for curiosity etc.

Another thing to remember is that Alexa uses Google search terms. With this recent update we again made it to the top of the serps for our keywords and are generating some traffic from Alexa.

I would think that giving non productive answers to honest questions is a bigger waste of bandwidth :)

[dutch_dude]

because there are webmasters that frequent this forum who check these stats as a way to gauge the GENERAL well being of a website. Whether they are buying advertising or just for curiosity etc.

Exactly!

It is incredible how many otherwise sensible webmasters turn totally irrational when alexa is even mentioned. Maybe they were turned down for something for having not a high enough ranking :)

As for your question which I thought a bit more about, could it be that you have a frame with the google adsense script as it's source? The Alexa toolbar might then get confused if the frame were the active one or something. It's the only reason I can think about :) It is a very strange problem.

[incrediBILL]

OK, let's get some facts on the table.

I used to think Alexa had some value in determining which sites ranked but anything below the top 1,000 or so turns out to be MEANINGLESS.

Why? Because so few people use the Alexa toolbar that a SINGLE person using it frequenting a SINGLE web site can drastically skew the rankings. For instance, a webmaster running Alexa can bump his own ranking from 40K to 20K just maintaining his site.

I don't use the toolbar, but I assume one of my competitors does as he admitted in his blog he has 50% less traffic than I do and is ranked almost 10K higher.

It's STATISTICALLY meaningless

Enjoy your fruitless debate.

[openmind]

We have had the same experience with Alexa: If you install the Alexa toolbar and view your own pages several times a day your Alexa ranking will go up dramatically. The question here really is how many people actually use the Alexe toolbar? I have no hard facts but I would venture to say that Google is the number one in the toolbar market holding the lion's share. I don't know where the Alexa toolbar ranks but I'm sure only a tiny little fraction of all Internet users have this toolbar installed so what good are those Alexa results then?

[incrediBILL]

I use Alexa and assume it's just one way to get a sense of how you rank against competition, not terribly scientific, but appears to be better than some of the other lamer attempts.

However, I don't use their toolbar so I don't skew my own results, but if a competitor is skewing his results there is no way to know for sure unless you can find out his actual traffic stats.

[miedmark]

I never installed alexa toolbar. Ever since I joined adsense my rating went from 2,000,000 to 400,000 in 3 months. I'm not too thrilled with Alexa as I have not seen any traffic from them whatsoever. Probably if I was in the top 50,000 I would see some traffic.

[sailorjwd]

Thanks for the tip.. I'll install Alexa tool bar so I can influence the position of my site somewhere atleast.

Until I read this thread I was so proud to have an Alexa ranking of 60,000 :(

[Creatix]

Alexa was, in the past, about providing website information... in fact they still are.
I am not going to complain about the Alexa services, I find them to sometimes be quite helpful. You can even have a bit of fun finding out some handy stuff about your competitors.

To those that will try and skew their rankings by using the toolbar, be aware that it only records one visit per IP address each day as a unique visit. This means it isn't just so easy to improve rankings.

If you really did want to improve your rankings (although it may just be a waste of time, as you say) then you should create a personalised Alexa toolbar for your website, and send it to all of your subscribers. Hey, you rankings will go through the roof, and you might even make some money from the Amazon Affiliate program.

I do get traffic from Alexa... and I am happy with any traffic. They have their place in the market, and I agree that they do a better job than many other ranking systems out there.

In answer to the original question. That is a very strange scenario, although I think the response about an active framed page is the most likely answer.

[elguapo]

My site ranks 28000 in Alexa and other than that we cannot see if we ever have some benefit from it. So what 's the use.

[WallyWorld]

There is some software out there that will bump your site up in Alexa if you really think it would help you.

[woop01]

My 15 million page view per month site ranks around 150,000 on Alexa, my 3 million page view per month site ranks around 100,000, and our 2.2 million page view per month site ranks around 80,000.

I used to agree that Alexa could tell you some ball park stuff about competitors traffic. However, there isn't much correlation between Alexa rank and actual traffic for the vast vast majority of sites. Worrying about it is just going to waste time that you should spend on productive goals.

[miedmark]

Well said woop01

[oddsod]

It is indeed regretable that the moment Alexa ranking is mentioned some members jump in just to ridicule Alexa or to offer some "proof" that it is useless. It is extremely, extremely, extremely useful if you know how to use it. In analysing Google algo changes it is a vital and invaluable resource - particularly during long drawn out updates like Allegra and Bourbon - if you know how to use it. There are several other smart ways to use Alexa once you get past the basics of how it works and how it can be manipulated. If you ridicule something you don't know how to fully harness - instead of learning how to use the tool - then nobody loses but you.

I clicked on my company name which they displayed as the site and it opened a full page with only my 5 adlinks ads listed. Strange?

Is someone linking to that page from somewhere? Is there a 302?

[incrediBILL]

It is extremely, extremely, extremely useful if you know how to use it.

I used to think it had some value, but when I was chasing a competitor ranked at 15K only to find out my site ranked at 25K was already exceeding his visitors/traffic by almost double I quit holding much faith in their skewed perception of reality.

I'm just not sure what kind of a TOOL it is as anything this inaccurate used in construction would have a recall notice on it ;)

[EricGiguere]

And as more people switch away from IE to Firefox, use of the Alex toolbar will decrease. Yes, I know they have a version for Firefox (from A9.com, actually) but many of the useful features of the toolbar are already built into Firefox, so there's less incentive to install it.

Eric

[oddsod]

I used to think it had some value

From the explanation that followed you were obviously looking for value in the wrong place: as a reflection of traffic/comparative traffic between sites. It's use for that purpose is very limited.

[wyweb]

say what you will about alexa but it's one of the few yardsticks available for people to get an idea about a website. Alexa rankings are easily inflated and can not be said to be 100% reliable but again, it's a yardstick and there are damn few available to the public at large.

I check my alexa ranking every now and then. It hovers in the mid 40's and it gives me a good deal of satisfaction to see this. Traffic Ranking dot com is another good site to check if those kinds of stats are hugely important to you.

Yes, the figures can be manipulated. I did it as a test myself with one of my sites that gets very little traffic. It's easy to do with low traffic sites, not quite as easy for bigger sites however...

[oddsod]

>>use of the Alex toolbar will decrease

clearvision, I'm sorry your thread's been kinda hijacked but if you answer my previous questions we'll try to get it back on the road again.