There continues to be much discussion about the validity and worth of Alexa’s traffic ranking stats. Consequently, Alexa has recently published a number of articles on its blog to debunk some popular myths and to shed some light on how it gathers its data. I’ll share some excerpts from those articles with you in a moment, but first some background.
The Alexa Traffic Rank statistics are provided by Alexa Internet Inc., a California-based company that was founded in 1996. In 1999, Amazon acquired Alexa for over $250 Million.
According to a 1997 press release in CNET…
Alexa clearly states that the Alexa Traffic Rank (aka AlexaRank) is an ESTIMATE of a site’s popularity. According to the Alexa Traffic Rank (at the time of writing this article), the ten most popular websites globally are:
This estimate is computed from data that Alexa gathers as described in the article, “Alexa Increases its Global Traffic Panel”…
This debunks two popular myths about the Alexa Traffic Rank:
NOTE: The Alexa Traffic Rank is NOT a real-time computation. AlexaRank is updated DAILY but is a calculation involving daily visits and pageviews over the last 3 MONTHS (i.e. 90 days). So, your AlexaRank today is based on your visits/pageviews yesterday and for each of the previous 89 days.
On a number of occasions, I’ve come across articles by bloggers doing an in-depth comparison between the traffic rank according to Alexa versus their Google Analytics traffic stats. Unfortunately, in most of these articles, the bloggers start out with a FLAWED premise – they compare Alexa’s off-site results with Google’s on-site results.
You see, to gather Google Analytics data for your site, you must first create a free Google Analytics account and set up the web tracking code on your website. Then the resulting statistics is directly related to traffic on your website.
To PROPERLY compare Alexa’s data with Google’s you will need to also have Alexa’s Certify Code installed on your website. Then Alexa will be able to DIRECTLY measure your website traffic. Unfortunately, Alexa does not provide their tracking code for free. So, most people simply opt for Alexa’s ESTIMATED traffic stats which will obviously NOT correlate to their actual website traffic.
As a result, when comparing their traffic statistics from Google (on-site) with that from Alexa (off-site), most people are comparing APPLES with ORANGES. The resulting discrepancies they highlight in their comparison is to be expected.
Alexa does NOT purported the Alexa Traffic Rank to be anything but an ESTIMATE of a site’s popularity. The following excerpt is from Alexa’s About Us page:
Alexa has clearly expressed the limits of their ranking system:
So what Alexa is saying, is that for websites ranked 1 to 100,000 there is a high degree of accuracy of their placement on Alexa’s popularity meter. In addition, there will be better correlation between actual website traffic and its AlexaRank for these sites.
A couple more points to bear in mind as far as AlexaRank’s limitations are concerned:
Now to answer the BIG questions:
From what I can gather, AlexaRank is of SOME importance to those involved in site monetization like some ad-networks, buyers/sellers of domains/websites, and investors. Here are a couple examples as proof of such…
There are COUNTLESS articles across the web offering tips, tricks, suggestions, or guides on how to improve your website’s AlexaRank. A couple suggestions that keep coming up have recently been debunked as Alexa Traffic Rank myths discussed on Alexa’s blog in the article, “Top 6 Myths about the Alexa Traffic Rank”…
Part of the process of claiming your site on Alexa (a free service), is to add a verification code to your website. This is NOT the same as the web tracking code that comes with certifying your site’s metrics (a paid service).
First, consider this: do you think the top 10 sites listed above (or even the top 500) were focused on finding ways to improve their Alexa Rank? Probably not! Rather they focused on making their site a go-to place for whatever service/product they offer. In time, their popularity increased and they ended up where they are on Alexa top sites lists.
The point is, focus on improving your web presence. Make your website a go-to place in your niche and your site’s popularity and Alexa Traffic Rank will improve.
That being said, one proven step you can take to see improvements in your site’s Alexa Traffic Rank is to become part of Alexa’s global data panel. As Alexa says:
To join the data panel, you will need to install one of Alexa’s toolbars or browser extensions for…
Firefox: toolbar
Chrome: browser extension
IE: toolbar
Then, be sure to visit your own site on a daily basis in a browser that is Alexa-enabled. You might want to set your browser’s homepage to your website.
Despite a number of INACCURACIES in the list “25 Most Important Facts About Improving Your Alexa Website Rank”, I can COMPLETELY attest to the TRUTH of suggestion #11:
Before we talk about alternatives, let us remind ourselves about what exactly Alexa does…
So, when talking about alternatives, we need to be clear about what type of alternatives we are referring to. Are we looking for an alternative that compares sites like Alexa does, OR are do we want an alternative that analyzes traffic at a particular site like Google Analytics does?
For more on Alexa Traffic Rank, you might find the following resources helpful:
Also, visit our “Website Ranking and Tracking” board on Pinterest for some more insights.
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