Example of how Alexa is inaccurate

[lukeeales]

I have a site on the same topic as an associate.

My daily uniques: ~4500
His daily uniquies: ~800

My rank for today: 465,263
His rank for today: 72,553

And as a result, he thinks his site is better than mine.

Hopefully this will prove to those who value Alexa rating, that infact it is fairly useless in determining traffic levels.

 

[Jeanco]

Where does the traffic originate from? I believe Alexa's ranking is based heavily on search engine traffic rather than links, which is why it is a valuable tool depending on the site.

 

[weeps]

Jeanco, alexa numbers are based on the number of visits to the site from people who have the alexa toolbar installed. The number of visits gets you a rank out of 4000000. It has nothing to do with search engines or links.

 

[Jeanco]

Thanks for clearing that up, so in essence it is useless.

 

[stevey]

yes, i have a site that gets on avarage 35 unique a day and it is ranked 91,267 all that alexa shows is how popular your site is to people who have the alexa bar, also when it tells you about popups some sites that have no popups alexa reports them as having them as the people who have the tool bar have aload of adware on there pc's, when it comes to alexa ranking your better off taking a blind guess at how popular a site is

 

[lukeeales]

stevey, that is insane.

 

[checknme]

I know for a fact how inaccurate it is. Comparing the numbers to NetRatings and/or Media Metrix shows how off they are. But it's one of the only free tools out there.

 

[fab]

I have a number of sites, which I've checked. One site has 15 uniques/day rated 600k, another with 150 uniques/day rates 2.5 m.

 

[domaintalk]

If you put alexas toolbar or so too, your rankings will improve.
No one cares about alexa ranks anymore.

Regards
VP

 

[xwhois]

interesting stuff ...

 

[BLazeD]

Its is helpful to some extent, but only very generally. If you have logs then it doesnt mean anything of course.

But it can be useful to gauge the traffic that your competitors are getting.

 

[stevey]

alexa is a waste of space on the net, download the alexa bar and visit your site a few times a day and get nice ratings, or if you want really good ratings get a few mates to download the bar and visit your site once a day and see your results rocket. if you buy websites on there alexa rating or google PR then you are crazy as both are sooo easily faked and increased to make the site look good, ALWAYS look at the site stats, and the site referers that way you can tell that the site gets good real hits and can see where its coming from

 

[GiantDomains]

I didn't know anybody relied on alexa stats anymore, an amazon toolbor that only counts traffic for those whom have the toolbar, ie. webmasters - waste of space!

 

[mole]

Agreed, both Alexa and Overture are a bunch of manipulated crock.

 

[guiwang]

I know many sites in China have got a high rank by cheat.

And now,Alexa has begin to clear these site from their database.

But,I don't think they can clear all.So,I think only top 10 is right.

 

[mole]

I know many sites in China have got a high rank by cheat.

The Internet infrastructure as we know it is full of cheat traffic and manipulation the size of Manhatten island, its one of the most perfect canvases invented by man to cheat the blind and clueless.