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carpunky
Joined:
08 Dec 2003
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133
Location:
St Louis Mo
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Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2003 10:59 pm
Post subject: Alexa Ranking / Propaganda
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Hiya,
As it was metioned before in this forum and I just wanted to confirm that the alexa ranking has absolutley no meaning.
I have recieved no hits to mention besides the ones from this forum and a few from other links and my traffic ranking in alexa is already down in the 700,00's, So i really don't think Alexa ranking has any value other than propaganda for there site.
I did recieve a hit for the keyword decorating designs today from a yahoo search, but I couldnt find my site on yahoo after checking ? Anyone know how this could have happened ? It did give me a exuse to go buy beer and get drunk ( Bud-light..tonight ) and celebrate.
P.S I was also contacted about 1 of my domain names today and ended up selling it for 125.00 after having it only for a month for a purchase price of 7.99. That made my Day but Im sure the site will be worth alot if developed. ( pokerseries.com was the domain)
Happy New years
Jeff
http://www.alexa.com/data/details?amzn_id=designingonli-20&url=home-decorating-designs.com/ |
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Debs
Joined:
16 Aug 2003
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4296
Location:
NY
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Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2003 11:29 pm
Post subject: Re: Alexa Ranking / Propaganda
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| carpunky wrote: | Hiya,
As it was metioned before in this forum and I just wanted to confirm that the alexa ranking has absolutley no meaning.
I have recieved no hits to mention besides the ones from this forum and a few from other links and my traffic ranking in alexa is already down in the 700,00's, So i really don't think Alexa ranking has any value other than propaganda for there site. |
Alexa is more accurate of traffic once you hit below 100,000. It is a better tool to compare against similar sites in topic and traffic, then it is an absolute web ranking.
| Quote: | | I did recieve a hit for the keyword decorating designs today from a yahoo search, but I couldnt find my site on yahoo after checking ? Anyone know how this could have happened ? |
Google supplies results in Yahoo searches. It means you likely got listed in Google!
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Learn how to turn keyphrases into quality, well-targeted articles your visitors and SE's will love with Gary Antosh's new ebook "Web Content Made Easy!" |
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williec
Joined:
12 Dec 2003
Posts:
16
Location:
Northwest Florida (USA)
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Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2003 2:21 pm
Post subject: My Understanding
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Since Alexa tracks traffic from other Alexa users, it is only a relative measure of traffic. People in certain niches, such as internet marketing use Alexa all the time, but the majority of web surfers don't, so the ranking is meaningful to some.
Some do use your Alexa ranking to judge both your success level and the worth of your site. While that's in inaccurate use of the Alexa tool, it's still done.
Willie Crawford
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AllanGardyne
Site Admin
Joined:
02 Jul 2003
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6326
Location:
by the beach, Australia
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Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2003 11:31 pm
Post subject: Re: Alexa Ranking / Propaganda
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| carpunky wrote: | | As it was metioned before in this forum and I just wanted to confirm that the alexa ranking has absolutley no meaning. |
I think it's mainly people who have low traffic who say that 
Believe me, it takes a LOT of work to get an Alexa ranking below 2,000 (been there, done that), and when you get to that level, Alexa gives you a jolly good idea whether a site gets decent traffic or not.
At that level it's extremely useful for comparing two sites in the same industry.
Sure, it takes account only of Alexa users, in the same way opinion polls count the opinions only of those polled, so there's a margin of error. But with 10 million copies downloaded, it has an impressive user base.
Ken Evoy probably knows more about this topic than anyone on the Net because he's sold 10,000 copies of Site Build It and therefore has a huge database of information. He can compare those sites' traffic with their Alexa rankings. He wrote a lengthy article on the topic for I-Sales Digest, which you can track down if you're interested in getting a well informed opinion on Alexa.
Allan Gardyne - AssociatePrograms.com
The Complete Site Build It! Reference Center...
This Link Directory May Change Your Affiliate Business
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/search/reference-center.shtml |
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Enterprise
Joined:
02 Dec 2003
Posts:
44
Location:
Florida
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Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 11:50 pm
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| Quote: | | I think it's mainly people who have low traffic who say that |
Sorry, I have to disagree.
As I mentioned in another post, you can give yourself a great Alexa ranking by installing the toolbar and setting your site as your home page. Getting your friends to do the same, or spend half an hour a day opening your own site, will soon see your Alexa ranking skyrocket.
The only way to judge the amount of traffic you get is by looking at your site stats.
Alexa tells you if your site is visited by people who have their toolbar installed. As mentioned, most people with the toolbar installed are marketers and/or webmasters who represent a tiny fraction of surfers.
How is that information valuable?
That toolbar is also spyware. I haven't seen the most recent version but about 12 months ago it was practically a keystroke logger. Even on secure pages your personal info inc. credit card number was not safe if you had Alexa installed and don't forget, they share the information they gather with third parties. Read their ToS carefully before installing.
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Guest
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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 12:05 am
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| Not to mention Ken promotes Alexa like it is the end all be all for measuring traffic statistics, which in the end artificially inflates the traffic statistics he uses when promoting SBI. Whether this is his intent I can't say, but there is no doubt it is happening. |
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Enterprise
Joined:
02 Dec 2003
Posts:
44
Location:
Florida
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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 12:09 am
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| Anonymous wrote: | | Not to mention Ken promotes Alexa like it is the end all be all for measuring traffic statistics, which in the end artificially inflates the traffic statistics he uses when promoting SBI. Whether this is his intent I can't say, but there is no doubt it is happening. |
I don't know if this is true or not but you have obviously been around the forum for some time to form that opinion so why not post with your user name?
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AllanGardyne
Site Admin
Joined:
02 Jul 2003
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6326
Location:
by the beach, Australia
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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 1:51 am
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| Enterprise wrote: | | As I mentioned in another post, you can give yourself a great Alexa ranking by installing the toolbar and setting your site as your home page. Getting your friends to do the same, or spend half an hour a day opening your own site, will soon see your Alexa ranking skyrocket. |
I thought Alexa had toughened up on that?
Even if it hasn't, such tactics would result in an appreciable difference only with sites they have a low ranking. For example, if you're getting 10,000 or so visitors a day, such tactics, adding 100 or so fake visitors, would be just a drop in the bucket and hardly affect your ranking at all.
Alexa gets more reliable, the lower the numbers.
Alexa says its user base "is not large enough to accurately determine the rankings of sites with fewer than roughly 1,000 total monthly visitors. Generally, Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data we receive is not statistically significant."
| Quote: | Alexa tells you if your site is visited by people who have their toolbar installed. As mentioned, most people with the toolbar installed are marketers and/or webmasters who represent a tiny fraction of surfers.
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Where's your evidence for this claim? Alexa says it has been downloaded 10 million times. Let's assume lots of computers were upgraded or replaced with new ones. Maybe at a very rough guess Alexa has maybe a million users. Whatever the number, it appears most likely to be a huge sampling of Internet users. Where's your evidence that they're all marketers?
| Quote: | | How is that information valuable? |
You can compare high traffic sites in the same industry, for example Be Free, CJ and LinkShare.
If you read an article in which Corey Rudl boasts that he sold $8.5 million worth of products last year, you can check his Alexa ranking to see if you think what he's saying could possibly be true. Today, he has an Alexa ranking of 1,092. That's VERY hard to get. Looks as though what he says could be true.
If an Internet marketer boasts in a sales blurb that he has a fantastic traffic-generating tool which has multiplied his traffic 100 times, you can ask him which site he uses it on and look at his Alexa stats - and probably have a good laugh
You can compare Internet marketing forums. If you're using sig files and hoping lots of people will see them, that's extremely useful. For example, http://www.webmasterworld.com has a very impressive Alexa ranking today of 258. It's busy! In comparison, AssociatePrograms.com has an Alexa ranking today of 1,376. (Some forums don't allow sig files.)
| Quote: | | Even on secure pages your personal info inc. credit card number was not safe... |
Sounds scary. Can you quote a reliable, up-to-date source on this?
In June, there was a fascinating discussion in I-Sales Digest on the advantages and disadvantages of Alexa. The discussion began on June 4, 2003. Ken Evoy's lengthy, well informed post was on June 12.
He's talking from the experience of surveying a unique database of thousands of SBI web sites. He found a good - not excellent - correlation between traffic and Alexa rankings.
You can read the whole discussion here: http://list.adventive.com/archives/archives.html
I think it's pretty impressive summing up of Alexa's usefulness.
Allan Gardyne - http://www.AssociatePrograms.com
The Complete Site Build It! Reference Center...
This Link Directory May Change Your Affiliate Business
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/search/reference-center.shtml |
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Debs
Joined:
16 Aug 2003
Posts:
4296
Location:
NY
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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 2:03 am
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You can now, and have been able to for awhile, opt out of 3rd party info sharing. I've used Alexa for several years, and yes I shop online, and no I have never had my information compromised, nor received adverts from merchants I didn't request.
I have however received Spam from unethical affiliates because bots accessed my website email, and one personal email I used got on a "subscribed email list" mmmm yah right ... it got on there from an unethical internet marketer who shall remain unnamed.
There are rumors abounding that the Google toolbar is also spyware because you can opt into the advanced features which do report certain data to Google. But like anything else, it isn't spyware if they tell you what they do, how they use it, and give you the opt out or opt in choice, as both Alexa and Google do. Now if only we could get the file sharing services to do the same, then we affiliates would have considerably less to worry about.
My 2 cents,
Debs
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Enterprise
Joined:
02 Dec 2003
Posts:
44
Location:
Florida
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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 6:50 am
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Wow....a lot to reply to 
From Alexa's ToS - "ALEXA'S TOOLBAR SERVICE COLLECTS AND STORES INFORMATION ABOUT THE WEB PAGES YOU VIEW, THE DATA YOU ENTER IN ONLINE FORMS...."
Anyone see a red flag there? Despite their protestations that they don't attempt to identify you they really wouldn't need to make much of an effort if that online form you filled in was your name and address. "Online forms" also includes the forms you put credit card info into. Being on a secure page does not prevent transmission of the data to Alexa because the toolbar is right there on the page with you.
| Quote: | I thought Alexa had toughened up on that?
Even if it hasn't, such tactics would result in an appreciable difference only with sites they have a low ranking. For example, if you're getting 10,000 or so visitors a day, such tactics, adding 100 or so fake visitors, would be just a drop in the bucket and hardly affect your ranking at all. |
First off, if you're getting 10,000 visitors a day who have the toolbar then yes, the other hundred would have little effect, or none at all if they had no toolbar. However, if you were getting 1,000,000 visitors a day and none of them had the toolbar then they would have no effect on your Alexa ranking.
I have no clue if they tightened up on the 'cheat' to raise ranking. Let's try an experiment.
I just installed Alexa toolbar on my second machine and set my home page as http://www.1stpresla.org/, current ranking 4,799,736 with an average of around 20-30 visitors per day.
On my third machine, I set the home page to www.hostexa.com, currently ranking 2,080,561 with 40-70 visitors per day.
If they did tighten up on the cheat, they should show little, if any improvement as the visits increase.
| Quote: | | Quote: | | Alexa tells you if your site is visited by people who have their toolbar installed. As mentioned, most people with the toolbar installed are marketers and/or webmasters who represent a tiny fraction of surfers. |
Where's your evidence for this claim? Alexa says it has been downloaded 10 million times. Let's assume lots of computers were upgraded or replaced with new ones. Maybe at a very rough guess Alexa has maybe a million users. Whatever the number, it appears most likely to be a huge sampling of Internet users. Where's your evidence that they're all marketers? |
My evidence for my claim is based simply on the hundreds of people (clients, associates, friends) I have had reason to access their computers. NONE of them in five years or so have had Alexa installed. The only users I have ever discussed Alexa with who have used it are marketers, SEO's and web site owners most of whom now acknowledge that Alexa ranking is irrelevant.
You could say that is not a very scientific study and you'd be right but consider this.
There have been 10 million downloads of the toolbar in how many years? How many of those downloads have, as you say, been re-installs onto new machines? How many have been upgrades to latest versions? How many have been simply discarded?
Let's assume you're right that Alexa has around 1 million users. How many tens of millions use the internet? That means Alexa users are in a tiny minority and therefore not representative of internet users as a whole.
| Quote: | | Alexa says its user base "is not large enough to accurately determine the rankings of sites with fewer than roughly 1,000 total monthly visitors. |
Where did that number come from? Is it possible that Alexa guesstimate that only 1 in 1000 visitors (0.1%) to a site will have the toolbar installed? If they are working on that basis it's easy to see how the figures they present are inaccurate. If I, as a toolbar user, visit a site 10 times a day, it would look to Alexa like that site is getting 10,000 visitors.
| Quote: | | Today, he has an Alexa ranking of 1,092. That's VERY hard to get. |
I got a site down to around 1, 700 from 3 million+ in a few weeks just setting it as my home page. Admittedly, I am online a lot. Maybe the experiment will indicate if it is still possible.
| Quote: | | Quote: | | How is that information valuable? |
You can compare high traffic sites in the same industry, for example Be Free, CJ and LinkShare...........You can compare Internet marketing forums. If you're using sig files and hoping lots of people will see them, that's extremely useful. For example, http://www.webmasterworld.com has a very impressive Alexa ranking today of 258. It's busy! |
Not familiar with Be Free but the other examples are aimed at marketers and site owners which would seem to reinforce my argument about the majority of people using Alexa having a vested interest in doing so.
I don't understand how so many people can't see the simple logic: the only true way to measure your traffic is your web stats. Your stats give you the exact number of visitors, not a highly inaccurate ranking figure.
As far as the privacy issues go....
| Quote: | | There are rumors abounding that the Google toolbar is also spyware because you can opt into the advanced features which do report certain data to Google. But like anything else, it isn't spyware if they tell you what they do, how they use it, and give you the opt out or opt in choice, as both Alexa and Google do. |
Their ToS, like many others, may not be the whole story....
Cautionary tale: I have, like many others, used numerous online names two of them being Mikailus and Fox including sites which required some personal info (which they were going to keep private and not share with anyone, of course)....I never used those pseudonyms together or at the same site though. After a few years of using these pseudonyms I received a letter (snail mail) addressed to Mikailus Fox at my home address which included my business name, home and cell number.....someone out there is peicing together disparate pieces of information collected by various companies to identify you.[/quote]
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AllanGardyne
Site Admin
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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 7:54 am
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| Enterprise wrote: | | Not familiar with Be Free... |
It's a major affiliate network. Be Free and CJ now have the same owners.
That's why I chose it as useful example - comparing affiliate networks.
| Quote: | | I don't understand how so many people can't see the simple logic: the only true way to measure your traffic is your web stats. |
I think you've missed the point.
Yes, your own stats will give you the most reliable figures of YOUR OWN traffic, but people want to get an idea of OTHER sites' traffic. Alexa isn't perfect, but it provides a useful way to compare the rankings of similar, popular sites in the same industry.
I look forward to reading the results of your experiments. I hope you'll post them here.
Allan Gardyne - http://www.AssociatePrograms.com
The Complete Site Build It! Reference Center...
This Link Directory May Change Your Affiliate Business
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/search/reference-center.shtml |
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LizB
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148
Location:
New Zealand
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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 8:45 am
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Have to say I agree that Alexa isn't very accurate. My ranking is 92,200 and yet I only get average of 70 visitors a day and that is only in the last couple of months. I was on line with it a lot while building it and saw my ranking increase entirely due to that.
But I like it! If it makes my site look more popular than it is that is just fine by me. I don't rate it much in deciding if other sites are popular though. 
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Charlie
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UK
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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 11:40 am
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How many of the regular posters here have Alexa installed?
Just a thought,
Charlie.
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Debs
Joined:
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4296
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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 12:37 pm
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I have it installed and use it to compare sites, and get information on those sites. It's useful for traffic patterns, and comparisons.
BTW, even Spybot confirms that Alexa only gathers personal information on forms where the field data is transferred in the url ... field data should NOT be transferred in an url, that's a poor way of maintaining security on personal information.
The problem is with visited site's form handling, since hacker programs look for those form fields in url features also.
Debs
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ascreen
Joined:
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Posts:
7
Location:
Indiana
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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2003 4:40 am
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I also use the Alexa toolbar. It might be worth pointing out that Alexa can generate a little bit of traffic for your site, as well. I average a visitor from Alexa every few weeks. Just someone browsing through Alexa's categories of programs.
Obviously one visitor every few weeks is not worth getting too excited about, but free traffic is free traffic. If your site is in a more popular category than mine, you might get even more traffic from Alexa.
Clay
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