Alexa Rankings?

[Gutterbrainbeats]

For me, Alexa is just an indicator; nothing more or less.

But, is there any other alexa-like tool out there that offers higher levels of accuracy?

[jolley]

Alexa Ranking some what different from the Google ranking.It will give your Rank of the traffic and it also Rank the Website with the Descending order.Means the highly visited website is ranked as 0.

[ariakerry]

Well according to my opinion Alexa ranking should be optimized in order to attract sponsors. If your alexa rankings are maintained then you'll be able to get high offers for sponsor ads which is good way to earn money. Simply Alexa can be tracked by installing a tool bar or if you are using Fire fox an addon named SearchStatus which will help you to track your Alexa rankings.

[eaton2003]

Alexa can be used as a personal indicator of where your site sits on the web compared to your competition. But only that as it can be subject to inflated results which does not give you an accurate picture of how particular sites are doing.

[janicehensley]

The Alexa Rank is different to Google PR; Alexa rank websites based solely on traffic to the website. Alexa rank websites in descending order towards 0, where the most highly visited website on the Internet is given a rank of 0.

[fernades]

Alexa ranking is mainly looking for the advertisements.

[deinveins99]

As far as I know they only have visits from people with the Alexa toolbar installed, because when a user visits a site with bar, register and so undermines Alexa rank. In short, you need to get a lot of people to the toolbar installed and visit your site.

[michael1981]

Alexa isn't 100% accurate, but its a rough indication of a websites traffic. It makes your site look great if you have a good Alexa ranking, but that's about it I guess.

Its very useful though for keyword research though. If I want to know if a keyword gets a lot of traffic, I do a Google search for that keyword. I then take the top 3 ranking websites and examine their alexa rankings, and which keywords are coming up mostly in their Alexa profiles. Its another tool for research and measuring performance if nothing else

[RyanTheRave]

Well obviously when looking at the Metrics of a good External Link, there are plenty of Metrics to look out for and Alexa is one of them. I would say that Alexa is one of the weaker Metrics so I wouldn't be to concerned at all.

[Buddy M]

I think Alexa is a fun tool to use. I don't know how accurate it is, but I'd rather have a good Alexa ranking then a poor one.

[stephenwaugh]

This is the most important thing about it. Alexa's ranking is just a quick indicator of how well your site is doing but it's not precise because it gathers the info from the users that have installed their tool bar and are sharing this information. It is very necessary

[robertmendonca184]

Alexa gives advertisers to set a high price for their products. It also helps to decide which site we should choose or not. But the results are not always apposite.

[betarades]

Alexa isn't a trustworthy tool. Big advertising houses know that, and dont give too much attention at alexa rankings. You can cheat alexa easily, many sites do it all the time.
The only reason to use alexa is just to have a general opinion about a site you are looking for.

[diceman]

If you want to get a true breakdown of a sites worth. To me the best tools are the new kids on the block that will calculate a total net worth of the site. They list everything from your alexa ranking to inbound links, dmoz listed and so on. Then a "total worth" of site at bottom. The only problem is, they all dont agree lol

[Buddy M]

As mentioned before, I like Alexa tools and would rather have a good rating with them than a poor one. What I find confusing in many of the posts on this thread is that many of you discount their rating, but then go on to say the rating is used to value a website that is for sale. if so many people think the ratings have no value, I doubt they would use that rating to determine the value of a website. Personally I take Alexa for what it claims:

• "The traffic data is based on the set of Alexa Toolbar users and traffic data obtained from other, diverse sources, which may not be a representative sample of the global Internet population. Known biases include (but are likely not limited to) the following:
  In some cases traffic data may also be adversely affected by our "site" definitions. With tens of millions of hosts on the Internet, our automated procedures for determining which hosts are serving the "same" content may be incorrect and/or out-of-date. Similarly, the determinations of domains and home pages may not always be accurate.
  Sites with relatively low traffic will not be accurately ranked by Alexa. Alexa’s data comes from a large sample of several million Alexa Toolbar users and other sources of traffic data; however, the size of the Web and concentration of most Web users on the most popular sites make it difficult to accurately determine the ranking of sites with fewer than 1,000 monthly users.
  Generally, Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable. Conversely, the closer a site gets to #1, the more reliable its rank. "

I think Alexa admits openly that the stats are questionable. As bolded above if the stats are well over 100,000 Alexa says not to put much weight in them, but if they are below that mark and the lower that number is the more reliable the stats are. If your site has an Alex rating of 1,000,000 I think it is safe to say you dont get that much traffic (in most cases, not all cases) and if your stats are 50,000 then I would say your site is getting a good number of hits. I wish mine was, 34,771 instead of 347,710.

[jschmuch]

Alexa isn't 100% accurate, but its a rough indication of a websites traffic. It makes your site look great if you have a good Alexa ranking, but that's about it I guess.

Its very useful though for keyword research though. If I want to know if a keyword gets a lot of traffic, I do a Google search for that keyword. I then take the top 3 ranking websites and examine their alexa rankings, and which keywords are coming up mostly in their Alexa profiles. Its another tool for research and measuring performance if nothing else

I'm sure you've already heard of it, but I'd suggest using the Google Adwords keyword tool HERE instead of Alexa for your keyword research. Its alot easier and definitely more accurate.

[smithjenny]

i dont care about Alexa rank

[Mysterio]

You should not care about Alexa Rank at all - it is HIGHLY inaccurate. I admit that having a nice Alexa Rank is probably nice but it's like PR - it doesn't matter at all.

[RbrtQuick]

I look at Alexa as a simple "cool tool", something that is not worth much, but it's fun to see and do some comparisons. As "thegooner," said Alexa, only makes their statistics of people who have the Alexa toolbar installed, which is a very small percentage.

[32x]

The only thing that is 100% accurate are your Server Logs.

They tell you ever Internet Protocol Address that have been to your site, exactly how many pages they view and how long they are there, with real time accuracy. Your logs give you a complete list of every IP Address. Your logs even tell you if it is a PC, MAC or Linux/Unix OS. they even tell you what type of browser they are using.. Google and Alexa do not give you that. How do you know if they are lying???

Well, Server Logs do not lie..

I get 50 times what Alexa says that I get and Google is not accurate either, although more than Alexa. Your logs catch the IPs, 1 by 1 and with complete, real time, accuracy. Anything else is using software to send a bot to your site.

READ YOUR LOGS PROGRAMMERS.