Is Alexa.com Smoking Crack?

Posted in online marketing, pagerank, seo on May 7th, 2010 by fubarrio
Tags: , , , , , ,

One of the imperfect metrics that webmasters and would be advertisers use (outside of raw Google Analytics data) and Google PageRank is the Alexa rating of a site.  For a listing of the top sites in the world you can go here: Alexa Ratings

Alexa.com has made a business out of providing metrics to the marketplace on various sites.  Alexa’s data is aggregated from several sources, one of which is (I believe) the alexa toolbar.

The Alexa ranking of a site, is the ranking of a site’s popularity among all web surfers.

As you can see from the above link, Google.com is #1 (duh)

What’s kind of cool, is that you can individual searches for sites like corporateraiter.com on the site by doing a search.  For CorporateRaiter’s alexa.com rank you can go here CorporateRaiter Alexa Rank

Madness!

According to alexa.com corporate raiter is among the top 300k sites WORLDWIDE.  And, ranked 82,977 in the US.

C’mon.

There have to be at least 83,000 porn sites that are more popular than Corporate Raiter.

In fact, I have some blogs on other topics that get more traffic that haven’t even broken the top 1MM on Alexa’s rating scale.  While I’m not complaining, I wanted to point this out since I mentioned it as one of the criteria that I would be tracking as part of my dofollow experiment.

On that measure I would have to say that the dofollow experiment was a smashing success.

As far as PageRank goes (a criminally lagging indicator) I had much better results on some subpages of mine using another technique.  I’m going to do some more experimenting to see if I can narrow down the specific reason that this “other” technique had so much success in getting pagerank *quickly*.  One of my posts actually has a pagerank of 4, and another has a pagerank of 3.

Let me know what you think about the alexa algorithm and your experiences with it?

Is Alexa worthwhile at all, or just a tool to dupe unsuspecting newbs in the Internet space?

Sound off.  Leave a comment.  It’s dofollow.


110 Responses to “Is Alexa.com Smoking Crack?”

  1. Atlanta Law Firm SEO Says:

    Alexa is very useful for comparing websites traffic and provide other useful details.

  2. fubarrio Says:

    i beg to differ.

  3. cumpryt Says:

    how much time it takes to boost alexa rank? thanks

  4. fubarrio Says:

    well…see for yourself….if you go back to the beginning of the blog experiment you can see that the entry is dated and explains what my rank was at the time. i take one more snapshot in my experiment update. and then, this update as well.

  5. Cake Rakeback Says:

    This is great! I had no idea what alexa rank was or how it could be affected by creating a dofollow blog. I am eager to learn more. You’ve found yourself a loyal reader, for sure.
    Thanks, Rake.

  6. Luis Says:

    It’s difficult to totally agree or trust on Alexa. Because they give ranking priority for those who downloads their “alexa tool bar”. At least that’s what I think.

  7. social media news Says:

    As i report on social media news and trending websites around the world – Alexa is one of the most useful tools to measure the traffic on a trending website.

    Problem with Alexa is they only properly rank sites they are interested in. Since being acquired by Amazon they have gone very lax in updating a majority of websites.

    The inbound links number cannot be trusted, Alexa is only properly ranking the 1000 most popular websites. The rest do not get indexed properly.

  8. Chat Seymo Says:

    Yeah I think Alexa is great for getting a first impression on how strong a website is. The exact numbers and ratings are not to be trusted though.

  9. Ariel Liluz@laptop carrying cases Says:

    Alexa rank is not based only on traffic from their company toolbar. Many small websites create their own toolbars via Alexa’s service and people who use it on that way (even if they maybe know it) create traffic too. But even I am very confused by Alexa’s rankings. I feel as if Alexa data is only valid for the alexa community. They clearly have a data sample that does NOT match the rest of the world. So the data they present is no good, unless you’re just interested in analyzing the Alexa community, or getting ranked high in their community.

  10. Josh Says:

    One thing Alexa does offer is the ability to ‘claim’ a site so you can provide the amount of traffic your site does get per month to get a ‘accurate’ rating in Alexa. I also think the information they provide doesn’t really matter much until a site breaks into 10,000. Heck, I’d go so far as to say 25,000.

  11. Geoff Says:

    You are right on with this, I really dislike Alexa as it completely skews data towards tech sites – I mean “average” users don’t use the alexa toolbar, so the sites that they tend to visit are obviously going to have a worse ranking since they aren’t being counted.

  12. Average cost of insurance Says:

    I have used alexa in determining worldwide site’s popularity. Everyday my personal or blog site increase it’s ranking. It’s an excellent tool because you can determine which site have higher ranking and which not

  13. pa bankruptcy attorneys Says:

    I would say that the rankings vary on different states? I wonder why people also prefer Alexa ranking rather than page rankings.

  14. link building Says:

    Well, I once had a site with 100 pages indexed and more visitors than a site with 5000 pages indexed and less visitors (in the same niche), yet they gave the site with more pages indexed a better alexa rank… So much for the traffic rank accuracy.

  15. Search submission Says:

    Alexa is just not very accurate. You can surf your own site with Alexa toolbar installed and get a ranking of less than 250,000. Meanwhile, I have a site that gets around 1,600 visitors a day but get a rank of only 480,000.

  16. Liebe Says:

    @ Luis: That is the way it works. But the question is: Would the world be a better place without alexa rank?
    And I think to this is no, simply because it is good for getting an approximate estimation of a website.

  17. Maya Says:

    q Chat Seymo: That’s what I use Alexa for, too.

  18. Actionscript swf Says:

    I removed alexa toolbar because it confuse my website stats…

  19. Chicago Bears Hats Says:

    Alexa always seemed odd to me beuase its stats are driven by a toolbar, and to be honest, I have never met anyone who used it.

  20. steve q Says:

    Hi There

    Just discovered Alexa, it’s a good tool for checking all those folks who claim to get 1,000,000 hits a day and only get 100. Mind you I still don’t believe it 100%.

  21. pozycjonowanie poznan Says:

    I don’t use Alexa (I don’t need it) but otherwise is very useful

  22. Office furniture file cabinets Says:

    For me Alexa is good for my affiliate marketing efforts it allows me to check on my competitors web pages. I don’t have there toolbar but I use them frequently.

  23. Camille Says:

    Thanks for the info. I thin its hard to decide one way or the other about Alexa. I’m still up in the air about it. It seems like they give some sites priority based on trivial details and ignore others that you would imagine to have a higher ranking.

  24. Kenny Hayslett | Tampa Real Estate Says:

    I think Alexa has its good things and not so accurate things. I use it sometimes but it is not my main site for my ranking. What other sites do you guys use?

  25. Keith Says:

    I don’t think that any traffic measuring system will ultimately be either accurate of fair. Unless we started seeing ISPs collating data, no one system will ever measure every visit correctly. So imperfect it may be, but Alexa is a good solution.

  26. sell your songs online Says:

    Yeah I would have to agree that Alexa being so high in pagerank does sound a little off.

  27. bali car rentals Says:

    we need alexa.com
    to expose our website ..
    to all parts of the world
    give us more information …………

  28. Andrew Keir Says:

    The flaw with the Alexa system as I understand it is that visits are only recorder by those with the plugin.

    As a result sites with tech / internet savvy visitors who are more likely to have the plugin score better than possibly more popular sites that have a different demographic.

    I guess it’s a metric like any other, but I wouldn’t bet your life on it.

  29. sunnysan.tom Says:

    Thanks for the above information andrew..:-)

  30. Travel Software Solution Says:

    Alexa has been one of the important factor in deciding the website performance. Although i insist that Alexa should be more clarified to people who’s not aware of it.

  31. cincinnati movers Says:

    I tend to disregard Alexa. I would rather try and pay more attention to how many actual visitors I receive per month.

  32. Toronto Movers Says:

    Alexa’s data is quite useful but shouldn’t be taken as gospel. How many people actually have the Alexa toolbar? Most of those people have it installed on their work PC. So we’re tracking website data from a selection of geeks while they are surfing the web at work. That’s probably why you’ve got a better ranking than a lot of other more ‘private’ sites

  33. internet marketing products reviewed Says:

    I dont actually use the Alexa toolbar, but I am forever checking my website rankings on Alexa to see whereabouts my site is, and to be honest I am rapidly losing patience with it.
    According to Alexa my main website has the same number of incoming links it has always had, even though I have specifically commented on dofollow blogs to get the backlink, and know that the links are still in place and are dofollow.
    In addition to that my main website has made it to page one of google for a competitive keyword phrase, and has increasing traffic every month, yet Alexa actually shows it going backwards.
    I am losing faith with Alexa, which is a pity because I wanted to start checking my rankings for my new blog internet marketing products reviewed.

  34. alex jordan Says:

    There are many ways besides Alexa you can use to check website stats. Instead of complaining why not just use another product.

  35. otimizar site Says:

    I’m using the alexa and I am very pleased with the results I recommend to use the alexa.

  36. towergem Says:

    alexa.com is good tool for seo

  37. vinyl lettering Says:

    when you have a large amount of alexa does it mean it drives more traffic to the site?

  38. SEO optimization services Says:

    Fine information, many thanks to the author. It is puzzling to me now, but in general, the usefulness and significance is overwhelming. Very much thanks again and best of luck!

  39. Helena Kjaer Says:

    I think the Alexa-ranking is quite usefull. But mainly because of the lack of good alternatives. There are simply no ranking-sites that are accurate right now. For an aproximate estimation of a website Alexa works fine.

  40. Chicago SEO Says:

    I haven’t used Alexa that much, I’m just beginning in internet marketing and I have heard that it is not that useful for SEO purposes.

  41. Alan Says:

    Just like the poster above has said, Alexa is the only option nowadays.
    P.S. the part about the Corporate Raiter and 83K porn sites is funny :)

  42. Hotdog Press Says:

    Alexa really used to be a big deal…..Not so sure anymore though

  43. fubarrio Says:

    ok, so obviously i need to do an article on comment spinning and comment spinners. i let a few go in here that are “obviously’ comment spun by a machine by way of example….will get to those in a bit.

  44. Top Engineering College in Jaipur Says:

    Nice read! Can anyone tell me how alexa knows about the traffic a website is getting? I mean like in Google analytics or for webmasters tool we need add some code in our website but there is nothing that alexa wants and still it shows everything..

    Also, i have seen many times that Alexa ranking do not improves if you use traffic exchange methods but will improve huge if you get traffic from Google or any other search engine or any kind of reference traffic…

    What is the reason behind this?

  45. Dating Reviews Says:

    yes, alexa is on crack! ha.

  46. Mobile App Development Says:

    Most of those people have it installed on their work PC. So we’re tracking website data from a selection of geeks while they are surfing the web at work.

  47. Khmer movies Says:

    Alexa ranks are skewed in favor of webmaster related sites. You can improve your Alexa rank just by surfing your site with the Alexa toolbar or Firefox extension search status. If your site is a blog you can raise your Alexa rank by joining advertising networks like Entrecard and Adgitize.

  48. instalatii gaze Says:

    I don’t know if the value of an website is only on what is there on the website. Are lots of porn sites with much clients then coca-cola , but that doesn’t mean that are better or more value.

  49. Dating Reviews Says:

    I’m a media buyer and I pay no attention when sites give me their Alexa ranking, its a certain type of demographic who install the toolbar and it gives distorted results

  50. meble apteczne Says:

    Allexa ranking doesn’t satisfy me but thanks for article

  51. Pixels and Dots Web design Says:

    In my experience tools like Alexa will have such a rough ranking data that its ridiculous. Seriously, in comparison I have been using Google’s keyword Tool to find searching data about keywords and its so off thats its almost unbearable. Tools like ALexa should only be used to get a very rough idea where you stand.

  52. Golf Swing Mechanics Says:

    I’m just starting to understand Alexa and all of it’s features. I like the ranking system it’s been helpful in managing our website and reach. I like the new Alexa toolbar. It is inconspicuous and easy to use. I am encouraging all of our staff to use it and learn from the information it tells us about the Internet market.

  53. Marquee Hire Says:

    I’ve used Alexa.com for years to compare competing sites within a niche over time.

    Used that way it works pretty well. But it’s not much use for comparing between niches, because the audience of different types of sites have a different likelihood of having the toolbar installed. That’s why Internet Marketing sites look more popular than they really are – they get a boost from a higher % than normal of their users having the Alexa Toolbar installed.

  54. Lee Says:

    i have used alexa a few times and didnt find it near as good as the google keyword tool.

  55. searchlackey Says:

    Alexa is very rough but I do use it to get a rough idea of ranking and site linking to mine.

  56. pakistani mujra Says:

    It has bee known for so long now that alexa’s system is full of flaws. You can easily increase your rankings just by installing alexa’s toolbar and visiting your site yourself (don’t do it if you’re running adsense, will result in low CTR).

  57. thewizz Says:

    Just take it with a pitch of salt really don’t get too hung up on it, look at it in context along with other indicators, you could be searching for the rest of your life for an exact science…

  58. Hotels in Kanyakumari Says:

    i have used alexa a few times and didnt find it near as good …it’s nice product…..

  59. karthibala Says:

    yes alexa is very rough but i used to compare competing sites with niche over time.

  60. Mark Says:

    You are absolutely right. I do not even understand what our alexa ranking is based on. It fluctuates madly and does provide one ounce of usable data to help me promote a website.

  61. zach Says:

    i dont really trust with alexa algorithm…. my site is less then visitor in a day, but the rank is has a massive narrow in a few weeks. what did i do is only put alexa tool bar, thats all, how can they put my site good? i am not satisfied with that, sound tha like the rank is fake.

  62. nottingham Says:

    It’s really hard to rely all the time in one basket. It’s better to use different options as well.

  63. Nail Polish Rack Says:

    The alexa toolbar is heavily skewed towards the “make money online”/internet marketing crowd because this crowd makes up the largest portion of their alexa toolbar user base. So is should be used primarily compares sites that are within these niches. My favorite tool is actually Compete. Not only does it assign a rank to a website, but you also get a snapshot of the keywords that are sending the site traffic. Believe me, I’ve run several of my own sites through this tool and the keywords tend to be spot on. Excellent tool for doing some “research” on your competition.

  64. Erik Doel Says:

    I have been just analyzing your post it’s very well crafted, I’m exploring on the internet looking for exactly how to begin this weblog thing and your site definitely is quite impressive.

  65. Breast Revision Implant Enhancement Says:

    I would not rely solely on the Alexa ranking as this is based on people who have installed the toolbar and then visit websites. Not very accurate, just like google’s page rank

  66. Andung Says:

    A new insight for me about alexa, thanks a lot…

  67. Seoline Says:

    Of course! they never did other things. alex don´t give you serious information.

  68. Jovit @ Sytek MN Directory Says:

    Honestly, I never bothered tracking my website’s rank on Alexa. I know that a lot of people usually do this but I don’t really know the purpose. Does Alexa ranking really matters? Whether we admit it or not, Google ranking is the one that matters most. So what is Alexa ranking really for? Can anyone care to tell us? Thanks.

  69. Montero | Miami Web Design Says:

    I have been trying to raise my alexa and finally I gave up, I feel happy and free now!

  70. Sytek MN Directory Says:

    The only tool I trust on rating or ranking a website is Google, nothing else.. Alexa might have been in this kind of industry in past few decades but I don’t know exactly how its credibility faded suddenly because of these issues.

  71. rosetta stone Says:

    It’s difficult to totally agree or trust on Alexa. Because they give ranking priority for those who downloads their “alexa tool bar”. I agree with Luis on his opinion, and that is just the social rule, isn’t it? only beneficial things to those organizations will obtain priority. Anyway, it’s just a reference for websites, who knows if the figures are correct or somewhat different from the reality. I don’t think Alexa’s got too much time and too much money spending in such movement.

  72. fansnatural Says:

    i’ve tried to install Alexa toolbar in my new firefox 4.0 beta 2 but its not compatible.. Alexa not upgrading their tools or somethin’ wrong with firefox?

  73. Lice Removal Service Long Island Says:

    I am just starting with SEO and I am looking for the best way to increase more traffic on the site and what should I consider first so that the site would have a high page rank. I am willing to learn more about different tactics. Right now I sometimes get irritated because everytime I search for site to build links there are lots of porn sites. It is really disgusting.

  74. Paris Apartments Says:

    Alexa is proding many others informations about the follow of one website. Actualy I am happy with their services

  75. Translator Dave Says:

    Alexa doesn’t do much for me or for my business. Oh well. I always thought it was overrated anyway.

  76. RTSPL SEO Says:

    At first alexa ranking system looks good, but once you starting digging in it get worst. To be true we do check our alexa ranking every now and then but never paid attention or gave important towards it. Alexa rate your site within there community and i don’t believe every internet user have there toolbar on every browser, its only professional how use it.
    But yes, they are developing with a good speed, and might be a big player in analytic field, but now stats provided by them are not that reliable as other analytic sites.

  77. DietmarD Says:

    Ofcourse the Alexa PageRank isn’t perfect. However neither is Google PageRank nor Sistrix visability. But no one would deny that those are indeed useful tools for SEO, you just have to understand that you don’t have to do their every bidding, just so your PR goes up.

  78. SEO Wiltshire Says:

    Yup, Alexa is a complete waste of time, I remember when I first started to get interested in doing seo for my first site, I used to check it regularly, then i discovered the stats on my hosting account and Google analytics, then I realized how inaccurate the data was, it’s a waste of time, but I’m sure there are plenty of people still viewing it.

  79. language translation site Says:

    Great info. Your article is very good structured and has good info on dofollow. I recomand it to everybody.

  80. Evasive Media Says:

    i have used alexa a few times and didnt find it near as good as the google analytics that I run on Evasive Media

  81. Samantha Says:

    The flaw with the Alexa system as I understand it is that visits are only recorder by those with the plugin.

    As a result sites with tech / internet savvy visitors who are more likely to have the plugin score better than possibly more popular sites that have a different demographic.

  82. Sports Archive Says:

    i was reading about the alexa algo and i found that there are autosurf sites throught which you can increase your alexa rank and they work really fast.

  83. fubarrio Says:

    hey, …. hahahaha deliceful.com awesome name…..can’t believe it would be THAT hard to win the SERPs for “Long Island Lice Removal” Service….just remember, the one who figures out the most different ways to saw the same thing (over and over) usually wins in SEO. this reply should help you out too :)

  84. fubarrio Says:

    hey, i love the rosetta stone stuff….are you selling rosetta stone dvds or tapes? or is it online access or what? thanks for the comment….doubled you up in my reply. peace.

  85. fubarrio Says:

    so dr. golshani…..what exactly is breast revision implant enhancement? sounds painful.

  86. fubarrio Says:

    i think i messed up your link when i approved it….why? cuz this is lame bot flattery. one more chance to write me a real comment before i send your link to the spam cleaners…make it count!

  87. Vector De Marcos Says:

    I appreciate many aspects and services that Alexa offers the world for free, but what I like about them most of all, above all, is that they are pure and simple.

    no opinion… just data in the purest most plain and helpful way they can balance it, so that it is easily understood.

    Of course, no script analytic script is going to be 100% accurate. The best place to find the MOST accurat6e stats for your own site is to check your hosting server stats (If you have that capability).

  88. wordpress designer Says:

    I use opensiteexplorer.org.

  89. BarstoolsOnline Says:

    I dont think alexa will be around much longer

  90. Motivated Sellers Says:

    Just like google replace msn and yahoo in terms of search. Alexa will be replaced by another competitor because they don’t give accurate results.

  91. Oprawy Oswietleniowe Says:

    There are many ways besides Alexa you can use to check website stats. Instead of complaining why not just use another product.

  92. wedding planning ideas Says:

    Alexa is great tools. Pretty good post about alexa. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts. Any way I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again soon

  93. Wedding photographers Sussex Says:

    Alexa can produce some really odd results sometimes (against true analytics of a site) but as long as you just use it as a guide or reference then it’s a great free tool

  94. Web 2.0 Development Says:

    Nice Post… I dont rely on alexa much.. but our clients in US give importance to it more… so we also have to work on it…

  95. Online Replicas Says:

    i just agree with barstool guy i don’t think alexa will be more in market in next couple of months

  96. London Ontario Web Design Says:

    Ha, luv the ‘it’s dofollow’ line. I am starting a similar experiment. What are your findings so far?

  97. James Books Says:

    I would say its an indicator, nothing more. Google Adplanner is much more accurate.

  98. sunny Says:

    I more like Google Rank,but what the difference between the Alexa Rating and Google Rank???
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    puma kicks
    puma sport shoes

  99. Fused Glass Says:

    i have used alexa a few times and didnt find it near as good as the google keyword tool.

  100. Chintan Kotadia Says:

    Well, according to me Alexa is increasing competition among the websites and it is giving opportunity for SEO specialists. But, Alexa don’t provide the accurate rights.

  101. Houston WebDesign Says:

    Alexa is considered as the best-tool for checking out the competition between websites as well as traffic on the website. But, I don’t found accurate results via Alexa. I think, Google will soon introduce new tool like Alexa.

  102. Asset Tracking Says:

    I agree with you. I cant understand Alexa either, I think my web sites Alexa rank is getting crazy. Who cares we got Google anyway. Great post by the way. Thanks.

  103. Simon Says:

    I think I’m right in saying that Alexa rank is based only on visitors that have either the Alexa toolbar installed or an Aelxa component on another toolbar. So it is a bit like how they do the TV ratings – extrapolation of a small audience sample. This might be why you are seeing some odd results.

  104. beats sale Says:

    alexa takes too long to update their links information

  105. web development Says:

    whatever, alexa gives a rough idea of a website, the amount of traffic it attracts. It is useful.

  106. Selling House Quick Says:

    Alexa rank is a traffic indicator. It show how popular your website is and it does not effect your website rank.

  107. diseño web chile Says:

    Meanwhile, I have a site that gets around 1,600 visitors a day but get a rank of only 480,000.Alexa can produce some really odd results sometimes (against true analytics of a site) but as long as you just use it as a guide or reference then it’s a great free tool

  108. cazare alexandria Says:

    yap alexa it is useful and I lite it

  109. Busana Muslim Says:

    Not only the data of alexa is inaccurate, but it can be manipulated also. But regardless of that, people still using the alexa rank to judge our website.

  110. Wordpress Says:

    Alexa is a highly unreliable tool, as it only users who downloaded the toolbar. I would use compete, but its for US TRAFFIC only.

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