The Alexa Internet rankings: How objective?

I wrote on my blog about Alexa ratings poor accuracy. I have no interest in Ebay what so ever.

Shame on your for not doing your home work and skewing your opinion to meet your agenda.

Alexa ratings. Good or bad, they are here to stay whether we like them or not. I have my doubts as to how accurate they are. We keep track of the Alexa Ratings of many of the major Host Finder sites at Web Host Magazine & Buyer’s Guide and it is amazing how much fluctuation there is. Because of that I can’t believe that the ratings reflect reality very well. I know that friends in the industry that run the major sites have traffic patterns similar to ours. Sites like Top Hosts, The Web Host Industry Review and Web Host Directory as well as Web Host Magazine & Buyer’s Guide receive steady traffic day in and day out. Many thousands of Web developers visit our sites each day, though Alexa would have you believe that our traffic is not steady at all. Over the last year I have seen traffic swings vary by more than 20 thousand visitors in a given day, or set of days.


What indicates Good Traffic?
Take our flagship site as an example. Web Host Magazine & Buyer’s Guide receives very good traffic. At the time of this writing it was rated the most popular Hosting Directory on Alexa and it has basically held the number one spot for the last year or so. At the time of this writing the site is at or near the top spot on Yahoo with the most popular term for our industry “Web Hosting.” We are at or near the top with other popular search terms as well (”Website Hosting,” “Web Host Reviews,” “Web Host News,” “Web Host Info,” etc. We also do pretty well overall in Google, MSN and other search engines. I have a huge list of terms that we place at or near the top on and an even larger group of other terms where we place in the first 3 pages of the top search engines… so that is an indication that we get healthy traffic.


However, despite looking at our traffic logs on a regular basis and knowing that our traffic is steady and growing, one look at Alexa would have you believe that our traffic has been wildly fluctuating. We have even received some concerned emails and phone calls from advertisers that seem fixated on the Alexa ratings.


How Does Alexa Work?
Alexa basis its traffic numbers by keeping track of web sites visited by people using the Alexa Toolbar. People go to the Alexa site and download the toolbar plug-in and they surf the Net while the Toolbar tracks the locations they visit. It then builds a list of the most popular sites based on how many different people using the Alexa toolbar visit the sites. It relies on a steady stream of people using their Toolbar.


Who Uses The Alexa Toolbar?
But just how accurate can the Toolbar be on the kinds of sites that are visited by people that do not tend to add Toolbar plug-ins to their browser? Web developers and people in the Web development industry are generally not interested in adding silly toolbars to their browser. Our industry has a certain aversion to helping other companies track what we do. As a rule we don’t like to belong to some large corporate marketing demographic analysis study.


Plus the Alexa Toolbar is used by an ever narrowing and exclusive set of people. It requires Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer 5.0 or newer! If the surverys are accurate, the majority of Web developers still use Windows and Internet Explorer, but that number is dwindling fast. There are too many better alternative browsers on the market that the Alexa Toolbar is not compatible with and more and more developers are switching to the better technology each day. Besides, if they still use Explorer, why would they use the Alexa Toolbar? Maybe they once used it to block pop-ups, but there are better pop-up blockers on the market today. And browsers like Opera and the new Netscape have far better pop-up blockers than the Alexa toolbar.


Alexa Accuracy
So with that in mind, how accurate can the Alexa Ratings be in our industry? I find it very hard to believe it is an accurate indication of actual traffic. However, when all things are considered, and you realize that the demographic cross-section of our industry, across the various Web Host Industry information sites, is roughly the same, then the Alexa Ratings are a good indicator of popularity, despite the fact that the actual numbers it displays are probably not even close to reality.


So What Good Is It?
Not everyone cares about the Alexa Ratings, but it comes up so often in conversations I have with friends in the industry. Plus I still get questions from potential advertisers asking me why our Alexa rating fluctuates so much. I go through a series of explanations so they understand that Alexa Ratings are not a perfect indicator of the actual numbers our site is receiving, but it does provide a standard that all Web Host Information sites can be compared against. In that regard it is not so bad after all.

Well well owned by Amazon, one of the largest net retailers. Yesiree it sure is objective.

Alexa is worthless

http://www.johnchow.com/index.php/why-alexa-is-worthless/

Alexa is a tool that many webmasters and advertisers used to gauge the size of a website. The Alexa ranking is based on a three month running average. The number shown is where a site ranks on the internet. For example, The TechZone has a ranking of 23,005. This mean the site is the 23,005th biggest on the Internet. Out of the billions of the sites on the net, being in the top 23,000 is pretty good, right? The only problem with the Alexa ranking is it is worthless.


The main problem with Alexa is its rankings are based on users who have installed the Alexa toolbar onto their browser. If you do not have the toolbar running, you do not affect the rankings of the sites you visit. The next big problem with Alexa is it is very easy to cheat the system. Just get a few friends to install the toolbar and have them surf your site everyday. It does not take many people to break into the top 100,000. You can even do it all by yourself by refreshing your site over and over again. Get a dozen friends to do it and you’re break into top 20,000 easily.

When requesting review samples for The TechZone, I have never had a hardware vendor asked me for the site’s Alexa ranking but I have heard from many smaller tech sites that have. I get the feeling that is the vendor’s way of denying a hardware request. They would look at the site’s Alexa ranking (say it’s 60,000) and then reply “Sorry we can only send review samples to sites with a 50,000 Alexa ranking or better.” At least I hope this is the true reason they use Alexa - as an excuse. I would hate to think a PR rep would base his/her decision to send a product on a site’s Alexa ranking.

The biggest users of the Alexa ranking are ad sales networks. They use the ranking to get a higher price from advertisers. For example, Text Link Ads (TLA) base part of its link pricing on a site’s Alexa ranking – the better your rank, the more money you can command. Adbrite does the same thing. If this is the case, then John Chow dot Com should command a lot of money for a link in the next few weeks. Why you ask? Take a look at its Alexa ranking.

See charts
http://www.johnchow.com/index.php/why-alexa-is-worthless/

Today, my blog is the 1,421st biggest site on the internet, with a reach of 1,200! According to Alexa, my blog now get more traffic and has a greater reach than the biggest computer hardware review site on the Internet, AnandTech.

Now I realize I received a ton of visitors in the past few days, but I know for a fact that it did not came remotely close to the traffic level of AnandTech. Yet, there you have it – a traffic graph showing I blew right past them.

I guess I should use this to my advantage. Text links for sales! Get linked by a top 1000 Alexa ranked blog! Only $1,000 a month! Anyone still think the Alexa ranking is worth anything?

Gary you been royally discredited.

Let me tutor you on journalistic integrity and critical thinking. I will humour you and assume Alexa rating is accurate. Let's review the list you refer to...shall we?

1 (none) yahoo.com
2 (none) msn.com
3 (none) google.com
4 2 youtube.com
5 (none) myspace.com
6 2 live.com
7 3 baidu.com
8 1 orkut.com
9 (none) qq.com
10 1 yahoo.co.jp
11 1 wikipedia.org
12 2 sina.com.cn
13 4 microsoft.com
14 8 megaupload.com
15 (none) blogger.com
16 3 ebay.com
17 13 hi5.com
18 35 rapidshare.com
19 (none) google.co.uk
20 6 sohu.com

Noticed anything in common? 99.9% of these sites fall into one these categories. Search Portals/News, Blogging, Social Networking. Of which are FREE and cater to the broader general population. Now it doesn't take a person with PHD or MBA person to figure out that it's not a big suprise Ebay would fall in the rankings amongst this group.

But it would take a biased person lacking critical thinking to ignore the fact EBAY IS THE ONLY ONLINE AUCTION AND RETAILER ON THIS LIST!

y'all following folks? LOL

Gary,

I suspect, this current and former blogger, Sigh, is obsessed with you and he thinks you are me on this message board. So he posted this.

http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_E/threadview?m=te&bn=5744&tid=667672&mid=667672&tof=3&frt=2#667672

Sigh has this unhealthy obsession that anyone that has anything bad to say is you. It wouldn't surprise me and I suspect that he is posting with several ID's on this blog. It's too easy to do and many of it is that rude/crude style of his.

As far as Ebay's traffic on Alexa goes. They may not be entirely accurate but they ARE showing traffic on a downward trend. Even Ebay management backs that up admitting last year that traffic was declining. That was why the store-to-core strategy was implemented to bring back the "Magic". Medved's Ebay listing count is not showing the core growing on its own. So there should be some worries there because management admitted this was a risky strategy.

http://www.medved.net/ebay/Y2007.gif?10844

Keep up the good work Gary!

SW

Color me appropriately humbled.

Gary E. Sattler

"The next big problem with Alexa is it is very easy to cheat the system. Just get a few friends to install the toolbar and have them surf your site everyday"

And it only takes one person to cheat Ebay's auction listings counts. The other thing with Alexa, is that it is easier for smaller sites to cheat, but the bigger the site, the more accurate Alexa becomes. Thus it is more difficult for Ebay to cheat...unlike auction listing counts.

"Well well owned by Amazon, one of the largest net retailers. Yesiree it sure is objective."

Amazon's traffic is declining as well as Ebay's.

Good discussion on Alexa here:

http://www.pheebay.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1555

Bonk.. Bonk, Gary hit his head again,
Gary and his board of officers "firemeg",
show me where Ebay is losing MONEY..........

It's in there.......

Brain

Ebay just broke through the magical $34 (resistance price) and will probably hit 37-40 after Q1 earnings. I think you better scrap the Alexa and Medved arguement. It appears broken.

There could be three reasons for Ebay's decline in Alexa rankings:

1.) Ebay is losing traffic.
2.) Everyone else is gaining traffic.
3.) Alexa's panel is growing without Ebay.

Since their traffic estimates are measured in "percentage of total internet users" and they've claimed to be bringing on huge numbers of international users, this makes sense: Ebay is biased towards America and the downward slide reflects correction in the panel.