Why Alexa Ranking is Useless
by Frank Jovine on 10/22/2009 in SEO
This article will call out the obvious based on actual data. Unfortunately, many advertisers use the Alexa Ranking as a score card on whether or not to advertise on a website. There are many SEO professionals who discard Alexa as a true indicator for a websites overall traffic ranking.
How Alexa Ranks a Website
Web usage information is utilized to provide information about the number of page views and number of users that Web sites receive. This data is also the basis for the Alexa traffic rank and traffic history graphs.
Here are some hard facts
TechJaws, for example, had an Alexa Rank of 36,926 just 2 1/2 months ago, with an average of 780 unique visitors daily.
I am going to show you actual data between 2 different websites and how skewed the Alexa Rankings are.
This data is based on the last 30 days.
- TechJaws.com: 1840 unique visitors daily – Alexa Rank 41,270
- Site B: 6400 unique visitors daily – Alexa Rank 111,723 (Information kept confidential as requested by the owner)
The data indicated that Site B outperformed TechJaws by more than 450% in unique visitors daily, but the Alexa Rank for Site B is more than double. Alexa Rank shouldn’t be used as a score card to measure a websites overall traffic ranking or should it be held in high regard.
What data is important?
There are 3 types of traffic indicators.
Direct Traffic: This traffic is from visitors who find the website content interesting. These visitors usually bookmark the site or typically know the URL and they will type it into the browser address bar. I also refer to this type of traffic as conversion. You converted a visitor into a returning customer or fan.
Referral Traffic: This traffic is coming from other sources such as; social networks, websites linking into your website or marketing campaigns. In most cases, this will be the highest traffic percentage to your website if you actively participate in social networks.
Search Engine: The cream of the crop, free and natural. This traffic comes through search using Google, Yahoo or other search engines. This is the traffic every webmaster, SEO Professional and Blogger wants to achieve in mass.
It’s important to only rely on real data by using web analytic tools to measure your websites traffic. There are free tools like Google Analytics that can provide you with the data you need to measure your marketing effectiveness. An advertiser should request this data before making an investment to advertise on any website.
Please share your current Alexa Rank and average daily unique visitors.
BunnygotBlog
Oct 22nd, 2009
Very good information.
Frank J
Oct 22nd, 2009
Bunny,
Thank you! People should not be concerned on how they rank with Alexa as it’s inconsistent.
Mathdelane
Oct 22nd, 2009
My blog’s Alexa rank doesn’t seem to be moving even though it has already generated a significant amount of traffic for the past 8 months.
I wonder why blog directories still rely on their information when in fact I could hardly believe that some sites outrank the other yet they rank less given your example. I wonder if they would even correct their metrics.
Frank J
Oct 22nd, 2009
Mathdelane,
Alexa had gone through a Algorithm change last year to improve accuracy and ranking, but it proved to be a bust at best.
Rob
Oct 22nd, 2009
For sure, Alexa is way out and should only be used as a very rough guide. My own blog had a good traffic ranking but was due to all the comment spammers hitting it looking for easy links.
Like you say, google analytics and other stat programs should be utilized in order to gauge more accurate numbers.
Frank J
Oct 22nd, 2009
Rob,
Thanks for the backing and you’re right, it’s a rough gauge at best.
Jonathan - Advanced Life Skills
Oct 22nd, 2009
A few months ago my Alexa ranking was about 70K. Since then, my traffic has gone up while my Alexa ranking has slid to 106K. I’m not the only one, I’ve seen this trend happening to several others.
Frank J
Oct 22nd, 2009
Jonathan,
Thanks for the confirmation of what I published. Alexa is useless and should not be used as a benchmark.
estherrosie
Oct 23rd, 2009
alexa is giving me a hard time and shows completely incorrect values.
our site started off relatively well and then all of sudden shot down the rankings.
alexa now says that 74% of my users are in Korea which is totally untrue and the ranking bears no relation on my traffic figures which are small but growing.
I even wrote to them to try and find out why as, like many others, I run this site for someone and they use the Alexa ranking as one of the indicators of how the site is doing.
Susie
Oct 23rd, 2009
461,332 according to alexa and average visitors are 250
Frank J
Oct 23rd, 2009
Susy,
That’s inconsistent and your rank should be much better as your site is averaging 250 visits per day.
Hicham
Oct 25th, 2009
Frank, I have stopped worring about Alexa, PageRank, No. of Comments and all those stuff since I do believe that spending time in having you “Content” is more useful than this although I respect other opnions, of course.
Btw, I want to let you know that few days ago I linked to your “Fighting Comment Spam” post in my post entitled “Blog Milestone: Comments” since it’s good resource and relevant to my post!
Frank J
Oct 25th, 2009
Hicham,
All that counts are the 3 types of traffic I shared – Direct, Referral and Search.