Big surprise in website ratings...................

[Chris Ryser]

I have just spent over 3 hours to update my optical website listing at http://optochemicals.com/web_ratings.htm and have found an interesting result.

All websites that have recently installed flash medias on their opening pages have dropped in their Alexa ratings (measures traffic) up to 1,000,000 points in some cases.

I would assume that people do not want to wait unitl the loud music has downloaded and go on to something else. Also those flash pages have now a feature that you can not go back to a previuous page or just advance to another one.

Looks like these flash pages make poeple from staying away of those pages.

[HarryChiling]

Chris,

On your site the Association of Technical Opticians is showing a google page rank of 0, and the site address is listed as www.onlineopticianry.com/wordpress. If the site address was listed as www.technicalopticians.org the page rank would be a 2.

[MedicLINK]

I agree ...
It's risky using newer technologies on websites. Some browsers won't understand it, others will require an update, which then slows down the load-time.
But with regular web users, and also in my case, if I am Googling and find a site that is slow loading or requires a plug-in, I will usually just click 'Back'. With so many resources on the internet, people have just gotten more impatient with slow-loading sites.

If web designers take the time to analyze their website statistics, they would get a better understanding of the people that visit. Knowing what operating system, browser type, the length of time they spend on the website and what pages are most popular should influence how the site is designed.


The MedicLINK Team

[For-Life]

I think the whole webpage thing has been poorly marketed. The pages are being developed based on what ever the tech guy can play around with, instead of being develop based on the user.

The most important part of the design should be quickness, easy to use, easy to understand, and pleasing to the eyes (not an eye sore, does not have to be gimmicky).

[MedicLINK]

You're right For-Life.

I find with web-design, in most cases, you get what you pay for. The more they charge you, the more user-friendly the site.
A lot of new web-sites are designed by students or fresh grads with a lot of new technologies in their head, which end up showing up in the website, even if the sites do not require it.

We have gone through 3-4 different website designs over the past few years, each time the site has gotten a little more complicated because we have more and more information to add.
But now, we are getting ready to re-launch our site, and we are back to the traditional site we first used a few years back. We realized that more content isn't necessarily better.

<Inserting Corporate Plug Below>
Our sites, www.eyesistant.com and www.mediclink.ca will be re-launched in the next week. Stay tuned for a press release on the re-launch.
:)

The MedicLINK Team

[For-Life]

MedicLink, it is also true with the programs. I was reviewing your program and was quite happy to see that it was nice and easy to use. We have had EZ Frame for 7 years now and it always bothered me how cumbersome it was.

[Steve Machol]

Doesn't surprise me at all. I hate Flash pages and almost always close the browser window immediately when I access one.

[MedicLINK]

Flash is def. annoying at times. I don't mind it as long as the load-time is decent.

The web pages I instantly hit 'Back' on are the ones with images are backgrounds, default blue links so you can't tell which ones you've been on, sites where I have to use the left/right scroll bars, missing graphics and graphics that take forever to load.

For-Life, thanks for the compliment on our software. When designing it, we brought it to some novice eyecare computer-users and watched them navigate around to make sure everything was put where it belongs.


The MedicLINK Team

[optirep]

Wow My Alexa Ranking is Great! Should I Trust It?

Jun
16
In the past I did not write in my ebook about somethings I did not care for much. I never really mentioned Alexa because I did not view it as a big deal. An epiphany hit me that I should state why I did not care much for Alexa stats.
Over the last few days my Alexa has doubled from around 13,400 to around 6,800. Wow I am great. Not really!
If you looked at my actual server logs you would see that traffic has been fairly constant over the past week with only a small uptick in traffic of about 5 percent. Why the huge increase in Alexa rankings then?

More new webmasters using the Alexa browser finding my site. The three things that helped boost the number of new webmasters reading this site are:

• mentioning the hidden links on FT - WebProNews linked to my site
• my site ranking for Corey Rudl's death, and his friends recently putting out a newsletter saying he died
• About.com WebSearch recently listing my blog as a top SEO blog

Many new webmasters get information from each of those channels. Just a few people from each browsing my site with an Alexa toolbar caused the rankings to nearly double, which is a huge change on a logarithmic scale for a site in the top 10,000.
Traffic has not changed much, sales are about the same, and if you looked just at Alexa things would look a bit brighter than they really are.
Here is what I recently wrote in my ebook:

Alexa is widely tooted as a must use tool by many marketing gurus. The problems with Alexa are:

• Alexa does not get much direct traffic and has a limited reach with it’s toolbar
• a small change in site visitors can represent a huge change in Alexa rating
• Alexa is biased toward webmaster traffic
• many times new webmasters are only tracking themselves visiting their own site

Why do many marketing hucksters heavily promote Alexa? Usually one of the following reasons:

• ignorance
• if you install the Alexa toolbar and then watch your own Alexa rating quickly rise as you surf your own site it is easy for me to tell you that you are learning quickly and seeing great results, thus it is easy to sell my customers results as being some of the best on the market
• if many people who visit my site about marketing install the Alexa toolbar then my Alexa rating would go exceptionally high
• the marketers may associate their own rise in success with their increasing Alexa ranking although it happens to be more of a coincidence than a direct correlation

A lower Alexa number means a greater level of traffic, and the traffic drops off logarithmically. You can fake a good Alexa score using various techniques, but if it shows your rankings in the millions then your site likely has next to no traffic.
Alexa by itself does not mean that much, but it simply provides a rough snapshot of what is going on. It can be spammed, but if a site has a ranking in the millions then it likely has little traffic. It is also hard to compare sites in different industries. For example, if I created a site about weight loss there would be many more people searching for it than a site about knitting. Also, you shouldn’t forget the webmaster bias the tool has, which means my site will have a higher Alexa rating than it should.

[Chris Ryser]

Thank you for your statement of disappoval of Alexa ratings.

I have watched the ratings of my own site in particular, knowing my statistics. The other site I have watched carfully is the Optiboard, without knowing its statistics.

Alexa ratings in my own case (based on 3 month of traffic) seem to be right on the dot. I have also watched that the Optiboard had somehow a slow down during the summer, without knowing the figures, and the ratings had slipped until about 2 weeks ago when it started to catch up the same way as my own site.

Yesterday I spent 7 hours going from site to site in order to update the ratings and the first section is nearly done.
Another surprise........a lot of sites that had dropped into the 5 million mark ended up in the basement as "NoData".
Then again many that had low ratings have shot way up. (I have to admit that this page is very successfull and is watched by many)

Some of these have a Google PR rating of 4-6 which is good, but were still rated by Alexa as No Data. I can now pin point the "why".
The webmaster most probably deleted the Alexa reporting files as spyware.

In my case I had been through this 2 years ago but caught it very fast and my corrections. My spyware remover accepts now the Alexa files and deletes all others that have been planted in my computers.

So, here we have a post for Alexa..............and another one against.

[Chris Ryser]

Chris,

On your site the Association of Technical Opticians is showing a google page rank of 0, and the site address is listed as www.onlineopticianry.com/wordpress. If the site address was listed as www.technicalopticians.org the page rank would be a 2.

Harry,

Sorry about that............I will correct it tomorrow morning at my next update. I checked your e-mail and it is definitely my mistake...........please let me know when I boo boo !

[HarryChiling]

Harry,

Sorry about that............I will correct it tomorrow morning at my next update. I checked your e-mail and it is definitely my mistake...........please let me know when I boo boo !

I am just gla dyou have us linked. I really apreciat eit and the link does help with our ratings.

[Chris Ryser]

I am just gla dyou have us linked. I really apreciat eit and the link does help with our ratings.

5 am..................I changed your web address, uploaded and tried it. You have the problem that it re-directs to the other wordpress address. I got a flip of Google PR2 while it was switching around, but then disapeared.