Hedir Review : Alexa numbers? How to read?

redhex · Joined: 10 Nov 2005 Posts: 559 18636 Hedir Points

Hi all,
I will like to know how you read alexa numbers? It is a ranking and how does it relates to the performance/SE visibility of your site?

I do know the numbers (rank of alexa) covers the whole of the site (domain in fact). How are the ranking derive? And what does the number means? Last but not least, if my rank is unranked (which is the case), what does it mean?

Thanks in advance.

lakhya · Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 473 15240 Hedir Points

Alexa ranking gives you an indication of how much traffic your site is getting relative to other sites on the net. It takes the most visited site on the net (in this case yahoo.com) as the no 1. site in terms of traffic and all other sites are ranked in comparison to the no. 1 site.

Alexa ranking for a site does not have any direct relationship with its search engine ranking, though it is seen that lower ranked sites usually come at the top in SERPs.

Talking about visibility, since lower ranked sites are assumed to get more traffic, it naturally follows that visibilty will also be more than higher ranked sites.

A site with rank 5,000 is assumed to be getting 10x the traffic a site with 50,000 is getting.

Alexa ranking is based on traffic and this traffic information is obtained when a visitor to a site has alexa toolbar on his or her browser or client application. So the ranking is dependent on the usage of the alexa toolbar that visitors to your site might have on their browsers. It does not count that portion of traffic which do not have or use alexa toolbar. Consequently,you do not get a true picture of volume of traffic to your site.

If your site is not getting ranked, most possibly, alexa does not have any information on your site in its database (which is primarily obtained by visitor usage of alexa toolbar).

AjiNIMC · Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 516 18600 Hedir Points

forget alexa

John · Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 79 2716 Hedir Points

The alexa ranking does not refelect the true trafic of your website.
As stated alexa derives their information from users who visit your website with the alexa toolbar installed.
Certain sites are more inclined to receive visitors who ahve the toolbar and therefore receive much better rankings than sites whose visitors for the most part dont use the toolbar.

Sites such sa domain forums, hosting forums, hosting information sites, seo sites and webmaster resource sites in general typically have the best alexa rankings.
Also large search engines who receive tons of traffic.

It is also extremely easy to "juice" your alexa results. In fact I can get any site under 20K in alexa in a short time.

A few years ago it was common practice for those who make money selling existing websites to manipulate the alexa rank as many noobish buyers thought low alexa numbers were a true judge of quality.

Alexa still has some merit though. if a site ranks in the top 10K then typically the site does get a good amount of traffic.

Use it in conjunction with other tools which can be manipulated (overture search term suggestion tool) and take all of the results and form an opinion.

lakhya · Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 473 15240 Hedir Points

Just a few days ago, i saw a site in top 100 of alexa ranking(forgot the site url, maybe still there). Newly started, not many backlinks, yet coming in top 100 sites according to alexa. Conclusion, its really easy to manipulate alexa ranking.

John · Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 79 2716 Hedir Points

Well if it was in the top 100 then it had to have a LOT of traffic. Even if someone set up a script to manipulate the results it couldnt get it down that low.
Also a domain can be very new but if it gets typein traffic it doesnt really matter if it is in the search engines or not.
And there are also sites who make custom toolbars which basically anyone can do and then they distribute them. I know of one site that does this that is in the top 100 yet their site doesnt seem like it gets much if any traffic and it has like 5 incoming links.

But you're right alexa rankings are very easy to juice!!

lakhya · Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 473 15240 Hedir Points

Yah, i agree that sometimes a new site can create quite a stir by offering something offtrack or innovative. But the site in question does not qualify for that. Thats what set me wondering.