Comments on: The truth about the Alexa rank updates

By: Marc C

Marc C — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 02:25:15 +0000

Fantastic site! I am loving it!! Will come back again (After St. Paddy’s) – subscribing to your feeds also, Thanks.

By: Mark@Scary Point and Click Games

Mark@Scary Point and Click Games — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:51:03 +0000

Alexa sucks – right away after they started. It’s just that all data is incorrect in a heavy way. You can’t trust Alexa and when you can’t trust an analytics software where is the use of it? Just my 50 cent.

By: limeshot

limeshot — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:57:29 +0000

Yep, it’s true, they can be skewed; but they do track the overall trend, and it would be really difficult to force your way to the top just by using a couple of work computers. And for the time being it is the only free option we have, apart from Compete, which is US-specific. Sure, I would love to get access to a more reliable benchmark, but for the time being this is all there is.

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:47:05 +0000

alexa results can be scewed by having the alexa toolbar installed on several work machines, as it really only effectively tracks traffic from those sources (ones with the toolbar). I can check my logs and see how much traffic I am getting on a month per month basis and compare it, but it is still a bit of a stab in the dark when it comes to alexa. (and the HUGE wait you have to get them to update thumbnails) Nick\\\´s last blog post: The collected t-shirt designs from the facebook gallery. site: [site]

By: limeshot

limeshot — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:40:19 +0000

Unfortunately Compete is US-centric, hence not very effective for non-US websites.

By: Groomsman Gifts

Groomsman Gifts — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:48:01 +0000

I feel that Alexa has slowly become irrelevant over the years. They do a head scratching job of collecting and reporting data. I really don’t pay much attention to them…to be honest. Compete.com is a much better source for search metrics.

By: Pages tagged "rank"

Pages tagged "rank" — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:36:07 +0000

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By: Cristi@Free Web Directory

Cristi@Free Web Directory — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:00:49 +0000

Alexa is way too strange when measuring the traffic. Someday the results from Alexa are compared with google analytics and are almost the same, other times are different. And that’s strange for me, cause I had the impression that Alexa takes the data out from google analytics.

By: khaled @ number plates

khaled @ number plates — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:31:32 +0000

Alexa ranking is obtained from toolbar users from what I understand. So by refining the toolbar they are obtaining more accurate data, without which their services would be of no use. I think Alexa keeps track of individual sub domains while compete displays the traffic for the entire domain, sub domains and all.

By: James@37PFL7603D

James@37PFL7603D — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:49:35 +0000

I’ve found the Alexa rankings to be pretty inconsistent at times. I know any technology can be a bit erratic but Alexa was giving me incorrect traffic info for about 2 months!

By: limeshot

limeshot — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:49:13 +0000

@Indonesia 2009: Ah well, I suppose it helps in you can give away freebies. Also, social media has been invaluable in driving traffic.

By: limeshot

limeshot — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:45:51 +0000

Well, actually Alexa already tracks subdomains (and has been doing so for at least two years) while COmpete does not.

A good example is blogger.com and the various blogs hosted on the platform, each on a subdomain of the blogger.com domain.

What Alexa does not track yet is individual pages and directories.