Do you use Alexa or Quantcast?

[MichaelCorfman]

Most webmasters know about Alexa (www.alexa.com) - it has been around for years and provides information about traffic to websites based on a panel of several million Alexa toolbar users. Comparing the traffic on your sites with the traffic on other sites can be interesting.

But the marketplace of such free tools just to a big step forward. Last weekend, Alexa added new information to their traffic pages. They now give information about traffic by country, and even provide traffic rankings by country. Talk about relevant new information in the post UIGEA age.

And in the last few months there is an entirely new entrant into this marketplace. Quantcast (www.quantcast.com) provides an entirely new ranking system based on monitoring visitors to websites connecting through North American ISPs. This panel won't have some of the biases the Alexa panel has, and isn't as subject to visit fraud, but is limited to North America.

Let us know whether or not you use these sites, and what you think of them.

Michael

[Dominique]

Thanks for pointing this out, Michael, both of these are very interesting!

[onestopgamblingguide]

Nice little heat wave we got going on this weekend

Thanks for the heads up on Alexa's new tools to their traffic pages! As well as the info on Quantcast - interesting name.

I use Alexa from time to time, but have never put much stock into it.

Just checked out Quantcast and seems you can do a free quantify/traffic check and/or sign up for an account. After doing the free check and not getting much info out of it, I signed up for an account. Very quick and easy. Sent a confirmation email and then gives you a javascript code to put on your site - aw heck what's another LOL. Will keep ya posted.

[WinYourWayKyle]

I use Alexa on a regular basis to check my traffic and where I am ranked...and to see where my visitors are coming from....

[CasinoDawg]

I use Alexa... but reults are terrible. Still, out of curiosity I like to hit it now and again. Like one site I have (non-portal) gets about 1000 visitors a day yet my rank is LESS than another site I have that gets about 300 visitors a day. Makes no sense!

[helpyou]

I use Alexa but it don't work ( or better for my website is not correct )

I use Alexa to see if the spider of the search pass on my website ......

[MichaelCorfman]

I just found out about another free traffic ranking service, so thought I would mention it also in this thread. It is Compete at www.compete.com.

Michael

[rob3786]

I use alexa weekly, just found out about quantcast and compete today they are good but I am not listed there yet. Alexa is probably better for me as I am targeting the European market not the US market.

[Nandakishore]

I study the Alexa stats regularly, especially the figures about where the visitors come from. But, what puzzles me is that their figures vary significantly from those displayed by Google Analytics.

Nandakishore
Online Casino Newsroom

[TheGooner]

I'm aware of Alexa and Compete ... and have used Alexa sparingly.
Never heard of quantcast before.

[aksana]

Alexa and compete are more familiar for me, I also have never heard about quantcast.

[rastan]

Try also webinfostats.com for website info and stats.

[universal4]

Are you kidding?

And of course this is posted in a thread that's more than 6 months old....way older than the site you posted....lol

That domain isn't even barely 3 weeks old...LOL

Ever hear of a shill? lol

Rick
Universal4

[denebstar]

Alexa's rankings are fake!
if you have installed alexa toolbar in your browser and visit your sites, alexa gives you rankings!

[universal4]

Many webmaster know this.

In fact we ran a test here once (a few years ago now maybe) and 15 to 20 of us inflated the rankings of maybe 15-20 sites by browsing them daily with the toolbar turned on.

Most of us saw very little if any increase in traffic that we could attribute to better Alexa Ranking...

Rick
Universal4

[Nandakishore]

I have started using Compete. I also use the free tools of SEOmoz. I have the SEOmoz toolbar on Firefox (http://www.seomoz.org/mozbar) which shows some metrics for all sites. I may use also Quantcast if I manage to enter their tag in my template. To what extent are they useful? No idea because the different metrics used by these tools are not quite comprehensible. But they are quite useful to compare different sites.

[FurnessPoker]

I was introduced to Alexa a few months ago and found it quite useful for getting ranking on my site as well as who was linking to me. I am not sure that it is of any more use than letting you know these things, I of course am running their toolbar so I can instantly see the rank of any sites I do visit in Firefox

[raphnix]

I honestly check my Alexa ranking everyday since I have my adds-on for it. If you know SEO guys, it helps if you try adding up some to your firefox browser too.

[universal4]

I am in the process of rebuilding one of my web hosting sites and since it has a focus on the webmaster community I will most certainly spend some time with Alexa on this site.

However, for general sites in other verticles, Alexa does not have the impact it claims to.

Agreed with a few of the posts, it is a nice tool to use for things like link checking, and some general figures....

Like the google pr rating and many other such tools, it's ok to have them in the arsenal, just don't rely too much on them.

Rick
Universal4

[ogpaper]

Neither quantcast nor compete are new...Alexa sux donkey balls, it's so off the radar I am surprised anyone still uses it at all.

I have found Quantcast to be the best "guesstimator" of traffic, very, very close to real trafic numbers, although as far as I know, it's really good only for U.S. websites (I have a few co.uk domains and can get nothing out of it).