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Why my Alexa Ranking falling down?

         

Sherly

5:29 am on Aug 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hello All,

My alexa ranking going down.....my site was down due to some server problem....is this the reason for going down?

Do any one have any idea for the same?

Thank you....

Lexur

6:36 am on Aug 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I suspect they have changed something in their "algo" because my main site is falling too but my traffic is really going up.

Sherly

6:51 am on Aug 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hi Lexur

Thanks for reply.

But I afraid that my alexa raking falling down because of my site was down for 2 days. Is this one of the reason to going down?

Wlauzon

8:05 am on Aug 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Why would anyone care about Alexa ranking?

It is totally meaningless.

kunwarbs

9:45 am on Aug 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Why would anyone care about Alexa ranking?
It is totally meaningless.

I agree with Wlauzon. Alexa ranking is NOT a real traffic indicator as it is based on the information gathered from Alexa Toolbar users.

Needless to say, you will rarely find any normal internet user having Alexa toolbar installed....so relax and try improving your real traffic and NOT alexa traffic rank

Habtom

9:55 am on Aug 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



so relax and try improving your real traffic and NOT alexa traffic rank

. . .um. . .and what is Alexa? ;)

Lexur

11:31 am on Aug 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

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Sherly, I never look at Alexa for each day rankings.
You should use it to look for weekly or even monthly trends.

And yes, I care for my own Alexa rankings. Everything in the life has his own meaning; you only have to be smart enough to discover it.

Wlauzon

6:34 pm on Aug 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



If you really think Alexa ranking matters, then just install their toobar and spam reload your site for a few hours. In fact there are macros that will do that for you.

And that is exactly what makes Alexa so useless.

woop01

6:43 pm on Aug 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



My gut response to your first question is one of the four or five people that visited your site with the Alexa toolbar likely uninstalled it.

The other replies are correct though. Online traffic tools are shaky to start and Alexa is one of the worst of the bunch.

dailypress

7:29 pm on Aug 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I would try Compete.com for better results! Not 100% accurate but I think its better than Alexa.

Lexur

11:03 am on Aug 21, 2007 (gmt 0)

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If you really think Alexa ranking matters, then just install their toobar and spam reload your site ...

I don't care for my ranking in Alexa but the info I freely receive about my sites and related ones. I spend more than a thousand a month in measurement tools for my main site and Alexa gives a lot of free useful info. I know perfectly what I'm talking about.

As I said, not everyone is smart enough to understand it.

woop01

12:50 pm on Aug 21, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Lexur, if you are going to end your post with an insult of the people replying to the thread, please explain what you are able to get from Alexa due to your superior intelligence.

Lexur

1:00 pm on Aug 21, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Please woop01, do your job for yourself; try a google search about "alexa data meaning" and "web traffic measurement", check the Alexa stats of a few dozen sites in the <1000 range and back here to beguin our talk.

woop01

1:51 pm on Aug 21, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



So you are only referring to the top 1,000? Why didn't you just say that?

There's no need to claim people who realize Alexa is absolutely bogus for anything lower than that aren't smart enough to understand it.

If you are trying to claim Alexa is the slightest bit legitimate for anything other than the very top sites (and there are still quite a few sites in that range through bogus methods), your insults of others intelligence are a bit ironic.

stapel

6:14 pm on Aug 21, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Sherly said: My alexa ranking going down.... Do any one have any idea for the same?

There are various reasons for the ranking to be declining. I would only be interested if the decline were unexpected, if it were the long-term (three-month moving average) values that were declining, and if those values were declining in comparison to my competitors.

The Alexa numbers are dubious, and there are many causes for skepticism, some of which have already been outlined. In addition, your short-term (daily and weekly) numbers could be affected by your site having been down the day they measured ("Yesterday" is whatever date is indicated in the lower right-hand corner of the graph) or if the Alexa bot happens to visit during your "slow" time.

For example, my site provides educational materials for high-school and college students. Their end-of-week homework isn't due until Monday, so my traffic heads to the basement on Friday, and doesn't rise again until Sunday evening. If the Alexa bot comes by on, say, a Saturday afternoon, my "Rank" for "Yesterday" might be "N/A", even though my "Rank" for "1 wk. Ave." might be around 50K.


Habtom said: what is Alexa?

To learn about Alexa, try browsing the Alexa site [alexa.com], or else study some of the many articles available online [google.com], including those available on this site [google.com].


dailypress said: I would try Compete.com for better results!

Looking at the stats provided by Compete.com for my own site, it looks like the site is reporting numbers that are between 1/5 and 1/3 of the actual values, and the reported numbers do not track with "real life". That is to say, even if you multiplied the Compete.com values for my site by, say, 4, you would not arrive at a good picture of activity on my domain.


Eliz.

dailypress

7:48 pm on Aug 21, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



stapel: compete.com shows mostly US traffic.

I noticed Alexa works better for a couple of my websites , on the other hand compete.com gives much better results on 2 other sites.

So it all depends. In my opinion, you can’t really rely on any 100%… but you can learn stuff from it… similar to Page Rank Toolbar which some people here are totally against.

None of these stats are 100% accurate.

For example:

Adbrite.com Unique visitors was no where close to what Google Analytics says in regards to my traffic but you can still use that information to get a rough estimate of how it compares with other sites who advertise with Adbrite. Assuming Adbrite estimates 60% of my real traffic, I would say it estimates the same for most other sites.
Just my personal thought!

stapel

1:53 pm on Aug 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



dailypress said: compete.com shows mostly US traffic.

Okay. But Compete.com's numbers do not reflect even my US numbers or patterns. At least Alexa's numbers seem to track -- for my site, anyway.

Eliz.

woop01

2:11 pm on Aug 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Stapel, the exact opposite is true for our sites. Amongst our sites, Alexa showed drop in traffic for periods in which traffic was at record levels and showed a .5m page view month site highly outranking an 18m site.

It's just another example of how flawed any single one of these ranking systems are.

We've started using an aggregate of stats from Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast to compare a set of sites in the same industry. Compete and Quantcast have at least a moderate level of correlation between each other for the sites we watch. Alexa is constantly an outlier when compared to other two and the server logs for the sites we control.

stapel

5:00 pm on Aug 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



woop01 said: Stapel, the exact opposite is true for our sites....

Huh. Well, "live and learn", eh? *wink*

For whatever it's worth, Quantcast appears to be posting numbers for my site that are 1/2 to 3/4 of the actual values, but at least the Quantcast patterns / trendlines seem to "track" realistically.

Thank you for the detailed information. I'm sure you've helped a lot of people with this! *smile*

Eliz.

oddsod

5:08 pm on Aug 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>>As I said, not everyone is smart enough to understand it.

I'm with Lexur. There's tons of usefulness in Alexa. And that's even outside of the top 5000! ;)

woop01

5:17 pm on Aug 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Quantcast appears to be posting numbers for my site that are 1/2 to 3/4 of the actual values

Definately agree on that one, I've never seen one that gets the actual amount of traffic right. We compare sites on relative terms.

Wlauzon

7:03 pm on Aug 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

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..There's tons of usefulness in Alexa..

Name one thing.

stapel

7:37 pm on Aug 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



oddsod said: There's tons of usefulness in Alexa.
Wlauzon said: Name one thing.

1) Alexa seems to be somewhat useful in comparing relative trends of related sites. While one could go badly wrong comparing the Alexa numbers for "we-sell-red-widgets.com" and "we-fix-blue-widgets.com", one might find useful information is comparing the numbers for "we-sell-red-widgets.com" and "we-are-vendors-of-red-widgets.com".

2) It can be a real ego boost when your Alexa trend-line overtakes a competitor's.

There: I named two things. *wink*

oddsod said: And that's even outside of the top 5000!

I think the proviso is usually to "trust" (with a grain of salt) only numbers above 100,000, or even 50,000. Below that, "static" in the readings can easily overwhelm valid data.

I could be wrong, of course....

Eliz.

LikeToLearn

7:44 pm on Aug 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I also agree for the usefulness in Alexa. My point of view is the same as everyone mentioned that no one should rely on any one source of information..... Alexa adds up to it and sometimes it works quite efficiently ...

Alexa helps in understanding site growth and trends .... it even helps in selling a site .... the higher the ranking, the more the people willing to buy .... lots of more things to consider....

Hope this helps a bit!

woop01

7:48 pm on Aug 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Depending on how much somebody wants the results for their site to be valid you'll hear top 100, 500, 1000, or 10000. I have never heard somebody say 10,000 to 100,000 is anything but huge mess other than people who want to believe it means something for the reasons you cited in #2.

Wlauzon

2:36 am on Aug 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



About 18 months ago I set out to prove to a non-believer in our company that Alexa rank is worthless.

I simply installed the Alexa toolbar on an unused computer, and had a script tell it to hit one of our sites about every 45 seconds. Did that for about 3 days.

We went from around #230,000 up to 7,000'ish in that time.

Since then of course, Alexa spamming has gotten even much more prevalent - a search for programs that will automatically spam Alexa with hits for your site show hundreds of different ones available.

As far as 'showing trends' - I don't believe that. At least it is not showing any trends that you cannot find in hundreds of other places. When one of the Bimbo Triad get arrested or goes into rehab again, you will see a trend up for Britney et al sites. But you will see that everywhere, not just on Alexa.

While you can occasionally find some interesting data on Alexa, very little of it is actually 'useful' data that you can do much with.

[edited by: Wlauzon at 2:48 am (utc) on Aug. 24, 2007]

plumsauce

3:05 am on Aug 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



About 18 months ago I set out to prove to a non-believer in our company that Alexa rank is worthless

You proved that the alexa system can be deliberately gamed, not that is worthless to those who know it can be gamed and take that into account. I hope your co-worker was smart enough to take you to task for this.

This type of gaming is thought to be common amongst sellers of sites of dubious value to the unwary.

However, the value of alexa, as in all stats is in the observation of trends not absolutes.

Someone who values the information will not game the system deliberately, or at least take it into account.

Why trends? Well that's the nature of statistics, especially on the web. You can *never* capture every page view or every instance of a visitor characteristic, so you use the trend to make educated guesstimates. Any tracking vendor who claims otherwise, I would be very quick to brand as either stupid or a liar.

For example, to claim that exactly 98.7 percent of visitors have javascript enabled is a suspect statement. However, I would accept that "about 95 percent of visitors this month have javascript enabled as compared to 85 percent in the same month last year, so javascript usage is up for visitors to this type of site audience", I would accept. It may be a subtle distinction, but for a careful listener, like a client considering incorporating javascript into their base functionality on a site, it is an important distinction.

oddsod

9:00 am on Aug 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Name one thing.

Hmm, no I won't bother. If you are so convinced it's of no use then please disregard it completely. ;)

woop, I have shared one secret with you on how Alexa could be used, check your PM.

callivert

9:48 am on Aug 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Alexa data:

a) has a systematic bias, probably toward webmaster, SEO, and tech sites such as ww.
b) increasing noise as you go down.

With this in mind, it is possible to make a cautious, limited interpretation of Alexa rank.
Order of magnitude is more reliable than exact order. The fact that Google, Yahoo and MSN are the top three demonstrates that at least at the top, it's in the ballpark. Despite the existence of Alexa spamming tools, note that nobody has successfully spammed their way to number 1. Therefore, manipulation has its limits: it's the reverse of the noise distribution, it gets harder as you go up in rank.
I'll even go out on a limb and say that the Alexa top 1000 mostly contains really big sites with lots of traffic. ;-)
Also, data for sites that have no vested interest in high rankings is probably more reliable (e.g., sites that are not for sale).

woop01

11:50 am on Aug 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



oddsod, yes, thanks, but it's different than the normal usability that people are speaking of here.
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