Alexa is the future of search results

[stratocaster]

Google is certainly losing its edge. The 1 page spam hyphenated domains are dominating the established sites. With the selling of PR becoming so common now I think measuring the popularity of a site by the number of visitors and their behavior the way alexa does is the only option that can work.

Discuss

[Traveler]

I don't see ALEXA overtaking Google.

Check out this thread about injecting site stickiness into GOOGLE results...
[webmasterworld.com...]

[SEO practioner]

Me neither... long live Google!

[chiyo]

They are totally different models. Alexa cannot possibly provide all that info for every site, (unless they start charging - and then you will run into all the problems of having a database of only sites that are willing or able to pay - increasing the proportion of commercial sites and online "ads" and reducing free info from information, government, university, and personal sites) and is site-centric while google is page-centric.

It is also highly dependent on the behaviours of a demographic of toolbar users that in no way can be generalised to surfers as a whole. Direct Hit tried this, and never succeded beyond indexing competently just a few very small amount of larger and most popular sites.

And as the other thread suggests, time-online is a very poor indicator of the ability of a "site" to return the info a searcher is looking for.

[pshea]

strato, no way. Don't fall for the Alexa BS; they have no legs. This is all being invented before our eyes. Almost nothing is absolute . . . . except that in my mind, Alexa means nothing. It is spycam for MS. [probably true]

[WebSempster]

Hi. I have severe doubts about manipulation of Alexa data as it stands. Here is my reasoning:

Facts: Alexa Data
There is a certain UK search site that yesterday ranked 6,505 with Alexa, but with only two linked sites (and these belong to a gaming group in Indiana USA) while mirago.co.uk ranked less than 9,300 with 1,619 links. This search site actually uses Mirago as its listing feed.

Facts: Google Data
Google ranks mirago.co.uk seventh in the directory
Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > Business and Economy > Internet > Search Engines
which is much as I would expect. On the other hand, this other site is not listed at all in that directory. Search on Google for the subject and >90% of what you will find is SEO's posting warnings about them.

Facts: Server Logs
24% of traffic over a five week period from the search engine to a client site is from the same IP address. Some of the requests are generating 304 responses. Subjective judgement: at least 45% of the in-bound traffic is suspect.

Analysis:
The high Alexa ranking has been acheived by paid people clicking from their site while using both tool bars. The Alexa algo is being fooled by this, but Google has recognised what has happened and given them a zero rating.

[Blue Gravity]

Personally I believe that Alexa is more of an advertiser or marketer's engine to check other site's rankings. The average web surfer uses Yahoo, or Altavista, and many of them over the past year or so have been converting over to Google, so I highly doubt that Google is losing it's edge. Surfers don't care what the top ranking site is and why, they just want to see the results page for the keyword they are searching for. It's marketers and advertisers and webmasters that like to see that stuff. Just my 2 cents.

[cornwall]

>> I think measuring the popularity of a site by the number of visitors and their behavior the way alexa does is the only option that can work.

There have been a number of threads recently (try site search) about the failings of Alexa to accurately rank sites. Data is too sparse, and anything below say 1000 on the Alexa list is suspect. Too easy to manipulate by a small number of people with Alexa tool bar :(

[rcjordan]

IMO, Alexa is a great site for impressing people that don't know any better --which kind of concerns me, because I know from experience that JohnQ doesn't know anything at all.

[mosley700]

Alexa is, IMHO, downright stoopid. :)

I recently had a guy come to me asking for past SEO clients. I gave him the info, with the ranking reports - hundreds of keywords involved here; first page ranking for the majority. This imp goes to Alexa and checks and says that they are not in the top 10,000 at Alexa. I replied, well, if you're not Korean, it's nothing to be worried about. I know plenty of webmasters that try to artificially inflate their Alexa ranking by asking their visitors to come to their site via Alexa, or, JoeAnt used to have a link from the Anthill to Alexa's JoeAnt page. What purpose does that serve except to artificially inflate the ranking? (It could still be there - haven't logged into my anthill for a while...)

[Elear]

Hi guys,
Just a simple question: Is possible to cheat Alexa or not?
I work for a company which is trusting Alexa 100% and i would like to show them the ranking can be cheated with some simple examples (as simple as possible; generating a random valid cookie and sending a tcp packet to alexa is not a good example to show Managers :) )

I do not want to promote any of my webs, just show is possible, let's say, to improve the ranking without effectively increasing the visitors of your web.

Thanks