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Thread: Un-logical Alexa results..........

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    Redhot Jumper Un-logical Alexa results..........

    While updating my optical website listing.............checking the Alexa ratings, which have dropped considerably for most websites across the board over the last 2 month.

    I came across one site which shows a tremendous Alexa traffic increase. It seems that such an increase is very interesting, there must be a sudden large increase of traffic to that site. Optiboard has an Alexa rating of 67,375 as of today......the other site is at 77,653 only 10,000 points less traffic. Obviously the amount of postings should not increase the traffic ratings. This an interesting case to look at.

    As it is a forum site one can check the post's which did not seem to have to show any increase, (some 3000 over the last few years) however the membership which was at about 80 has increased during March 2007 to over 300. None of the new members show any postings, but all have websites that are non optical, such Viagra, Cialis and others.

    Question:.....................
    Is this new membership base in that forum website being used as a reciprocal link exchange site (instead of using a special page for that purpose) and the webcrawlers sent through that site count as traffic points, influencing the Alexa results ???? Some of those websites are high ranking and will be crawled more often.

    It would be interesting to hear if anybody has any idea why this unlogical count is there. :hammer:

  2. #2
    Red Sox Red Sox Red Sox optirep's Avatar
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    Alexa = horse PooP

    Your Alexa Rating - Is It Really That Important?

    A discussion in my forum has prompted this newsletter as I think it is important for any online entrepreneur to understand how Alexa ratings work in order that they can understand why they may not be that important to the success of their online business. Too many people make the mistake of concentrating entirely on improving their Alexa ratings but at the end of the day, these rankings are just numbers - they won't put money in the bank.
    Alexa is a company owned by the Amazon group and it aims to rank every single website on the Internet in terms of how much traffic it is receiving.
    Quite simply, the lower your Alexa ranking, the more traffic your website gets. The ideal scenario would be to have an Alexa ranking of '1'. This would mean, in theory, that your website receives more traffic than any other website in the world. Currently this position is held by Yahoo.com and as you would expect, other top sites include Microsoft, Google and eBay.
    It is generally considered that a website with an Alexa rating of 100,000 or less is receiving a reasonable level of traffic but Alexa can be wildly misleading and very easily manipulated.
    To understand why the rankings are misleading, you need to understand how Alexa gathers the data that it uses to create the rankings in the first place. This is really very simple - Alexa has a free toolbar that you can download and install within your Internet browser and this reports back to Alexa with the details of every single website that you visit.
    Alexa can then use this information to see how many users are visiting a particular website. Then, because not every Internet user has the Alexa toolbar installed, Alexa will multiply the number of visitors by a specific margin to estimate the total number of visitors that a site may typically receive. The important word in the last sentence is 'estimate'.
    Let's assume that the above multiplication margin is ten - that means that for each Alexa toolbar user that visits a specific web page, Alexa assumes that another nine non-toolbar users will also visit the same page. This means that if 100 toolbar users visit a specific web page on a given day, Alexa will take this as meaning that a total of 1000 people visited the same page in that 24 hour period.
    This is where the figures can get distorted. If you have a website that attracts a higher than average number of Alexa toolbar users, then you are going to gain a lower Alexa rating because Alexa doesn't make any allowance for the fact that their toolbar users visit certain types of site more often. A typical example of this is Internet marketing sites. Most Internet entrepreneurs will have the Alexa toolbar installed because they like to see the Alexa rankings for sites as they visit them (the toolbar shows you this information as soon as you visit a site). But this means that if your website attracts a lot of Internet marketing-type visitors, then your Alexa rating will be inflated above what it should be.
    Here is a true-life example:
    There was a popular Internet marketing site for sale last year and it had an Alexa rating of about 19,000. I figured it must be getting heavy traffic but when I discussed the matter with the owner/seller, I found that it was only receiving 6000 unique visitors a month! The reason that the Alexa rating was so low was because the majority of these visitors had the Alexa toolbar installed and therefore the calculations were being thrown out massively.
    It is also possible to purchase software that will generate false hits to your site using the Alexa technology so that Alexa is fooled into believing that more people are visiting your site. This pushes your Alexa ranking down.
    At the end of the day though, what is the point of having a low Alexa rating if you are not making any sales? Sure it is nice to be able to say that your site is in the top 20,000 websites in the world but if the site isn't earning you an income, this ranking means very little (assuming that it was your intention for the site to earn you an income of course). Personally, I would much rather have a high Alexa ranking but a good income than a low ranking and minimal income.
    Of course, there are benefits to the Alexa service and it can be worthwhile installing their toolbar. The toolbar will give you an indication of how busy a particular site is and in turn, how popular it is. This can be helpful when making a decision as to whether to make an online purchase for example. It is also handy for checking out your competitors :-)
    Just don't get too hung up on Alexa as a measure of how well your business is doing. The real statistics that you should be watching are actual traffic numbers, conversion rates (ie. how many visitors actually buy something) and overall sales. These are the figures that will help you put cash in the bank and improve and grow your business.
    If you are interested in finding out more about Alexa and if you wish to install their toolbar, you can do so at http://www.alexa.com

    About the Author:
    Richard Grady has been helping people earn online since 1998. Find out more about Richard at: http://www.thetraderonline.com




  3. #3
    Master OptiBoarder keithbenjamin's Avatar
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    Here are some things you need to consider, Chris:

    -Alexa just "discovered" this "one site" back in November, since then traffic has been fairly consistent with no appreciable increase, but because Alexa rankings are based on a 3 month average, the score has taken this long to catch up.

    -The forum is not the only domain contained in this TLD. Alexa combines the traffic for all sites within a top-level domain to determine its score.

    -Bots and spiders do not contribute to Alexa ranking, because as Mikey pointed out they don't surf with an Alexa tool bar.

    -Alexa rankings are essentially worthless.

    -Keith

    Oh, and thanks for reminding me I needed to clean out my spam registrants (pain in my a$$). I do this periodically, but is has been a few weeks. I am now back down to 89 users. ;)

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    Redhot Jumper

    Quote Originally Posted by keithbenjamin View Post
    Oh, and thanks for reminding me I needed to clean out my spam registrants (pain in my a$$). I do this periodically, but is has been a few weeks. I am now back down to 89 users.
    Thanks Keith,

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    Redhot Jumper Alexa = horse PooP

    Quote Originally Posted by optirep
    ..
    Alexa = horse PooP

    We have had this discussion before, and you accused me of having a clicker to get my website rating up.

    How come that your website, for the ones who want to know it is LUXOTTICA, has suddenly come from the backyard over the last 6 month and is now at the first place on the optical sites on my listing?

    Who is clicking away to get it to that rating ????????? :hammer:

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    Red Sox Red Sox Red Sox optirep's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Ryser View Post
    We have had this discussion before, and you accused me of having a clicker to get my website rating up.

    How come that your website, for the ones who want to know it is LUXOTTICA, has suddenly come from the backyard over the last 6 month and is now at the first place on the optical sites on my listing?

    Who is clicking away to get it to that rating ????????? :hammer:
    Like I said Alexa is horse Poop. So what if Luxottica is #1. You stated in the past that you would help Luxottica boost its rating if they paid you. And I said, at that time, that I thought a high rating was useless.

    BUT Luxottica just added on-line ordering which is probably why. I work for Luxottica but I have no input in the web site or any other decision making! Just a sales rep! And I do not have the Alexa tool bar. In fact I have AOL which is invisible to Alexa.

    You should re-read the article I posted. (NOT MY WORDS).

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    Optiwizard making films Audiyoda's Avatar
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    I'll second that Alexa is horsepoop. It's weighted, and heavily weighted and no one in their right mind (except Chris) uses Alexa as a standard bearer for web traffic.

    Relying on those with a malware laden toolbar to determine traffic is simply stupid.

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    Blue Jumper Stupid horsepoop...........................

    Quote Originally Posted by Audiyoda View Post
    I'll second that Alexa is horsepoop. Relying on those with a malware laden toolbar to determine traffic is simply stupid.
    Pretty good statement........I would like to know on what your opinion is based............I checked, you don't even have a website and obviously have no idea about all the technicalities that are involved to make a site well listed and how to create good traffic to the site.

    I just love opinions that state others stupid without having a notion on the subject.

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    One of 3000 articles that trash Alexa!

    September 28th, 2006 by John Chow
    Alexa is a tool that many webmasters and advertisers used to gauge the size of a website. The Alexa ranking is based on a three month running average. The number shown is where a site ranks on the . This mean the site is the 23,005th biggest on the Internet. Out of the billions of the sites on the net, being in the top 23,000 is pretty good, right? The only problem with the Alexa ranking is it is worthless.
    The main problem with Alexa is its rankings are based on users who have installed the Alexa toolbar onto their browser. If you do not have the toolbar running, you do not affect the rankings of the sites you visit. The next big problem with Alexa is it is very easy to cheat the . Just get a few friends to install the toolbar and have them surf your site everyday. It does not take many people to break into the top 100,000. You can even do it all by yourself by refreshing your site over and over again. Get a dozen friends to do it and you’re break into top 20,000 easily.
    When requesting review samples for The TechZone, I have never had a hardware vendor asked me for the site’s Alexa ranking but I have heard from many smaller tech sites that have. I get the feeling that is the vendor’s way of denying a hardware request. They would look at the site’s Alexa ranking (say it’s 60,000) and then reply “Sorry we can only send review samples to sites with a 50,000 Alexa ranking or better.” At least I hope this is the true reason they use Alexa - as an excuse. I would hate to think a PR rep would base his/her decision to send a product on a site’s Alexa ranking.
    The biggest users of the Alexa ranking are ad sales ]. They use the ranking to get a higher price from advertisers. For example, Text Link Ads (TLA) base part of its link pricing on a site’s Alexa ranking – the better your rank, the more money you can command. Adbrite does the same thing. If this is the case, then John Chow dot Com should command a lot of money for a link in the next few weeks. Why you ask? Take a look at its Alexa ranking.

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    Blue Jumper Does that make him a specialist on Alexa....................

    Who is John Chow ? Does that make him a specialist on Alexa ratings, Just look at all the blogs....specialised in all subject right down to porn.

    John Chow, a damn fine person, friend of the community, Ultimate Fighting Championship contestant, member of the Save the Whales Foundation, the man that controls the black market on baby seal pelts and member of the "probably yo' daddy" foundation. Master of The TechZone and creator of some of some of the fastest [COLOR=#005ebf! important][FONT=verdana, tahoma, 'lucida grande', sans-serif][COLOR=#005ebf! important][FONT=verdana, tahoma, 'lucida grande', sans-serif]computers[/FONT][/FONT][/COLOR][/COLOR] the world have even seen. Consider yourself blessed to be reading his blog.
    Posts by Moto:


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    Red Sox Red Sox Red Sox optirep's Avatar
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    If you would like Chris I can post all the articles they debunk Alexa!

    I have yet to find any article that says it means anything!

    Here is one more!

    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.

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    Redhot Jumper Alexa........................

    Rep,

    You are so negative on Alexa............how about finding some good arguments about it.

    Actually Yahoo has just started a similar system, but it is still nowhere as it recognizes very few sites at this stage.

    Talking about my own site, which is the one I know best because I work at it every day. One of my most successful pages is my Optical Website listing at http://optochemicals.com/web_ratings.htm which has several hundreds of lookers every day. It has a top rating an listing on search engines.

    When I spend some time updating the Alexa results there is a trend to be seen. About 95 percent of all the sites go either up or down like waves in the ocean. The odd site that had fallen hard because the eliminated the reporting programs as spyware, but then reinstalled them went back fast to where they had been before. Then the odd site is moving from the backlanes slowly to the top.

    The two sites that have edged forward over the last 2 years are Luxottica and Transitions that are or will be at the very top soon.

    All this is for sure not due to personal maneuvering but does make some sense.

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