Alexa, Close But No Cigar

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

If you only have one site that you can access the stats to, the recent Alexa change probably freaked you out. But I can tell you from running multiple sites, with stats on all of them that Alexa was wrong before. And guess what, Alexa is still wrong now.

In fact, if you advertise based on Alexa numbers, you are still shooting in the dark. All you have really done is given yourself a justification to throw away your money when you chose to.

It used to be, if you were marketing products in the internet marketing, SEO, web development and other tech based fields, Alexa number were pretty reliable. After all, most of the people in this fields know about the Alexa toolbar and use it. But once you moved away into sites that did not appeal to this crowd, forget the numbers. They only muddied the waters.

Now, who the hell knows how useful the numbers are. They are still off, but there isn’t even a niche that I have identified where they are "on". Lets take a look at some true stats and the resulting Alexa numbers, shall we. Each of these are last months stats from Google and they are pretty indicative of the average, except for the first, which is this blog. Subtract about 1800 visitors from that one. And that even makes the Alexa numbers even less accurate.

 SM

Alexa:130,410

aadw

Alexa:521,534

 DPR

Alexa:124,780

dawp

Alexa:2,877,083

And I ask, what use is a number if it is not even partially accurate. Alexa, just shut up. I don’t want to hear your about your improvement. Your algorithm is idiotic. And there is no point to it. It’s like if I were trying to lose weight and the scale were set to random. Why even use it?

Tags: alexa, Alexa Toolbar, Alexa update, stats

Related posts

24 Apr, 2008  Traffic



14 Comments so far »

Filter: What is this?

  1. Marcus Hochstadt said

    April 24 2008 @ 11:32 am

    Now that’s really funny, Stephan. The third one really tops them all, geez…

    But does that tell us that, still, a ranking below (i.e. “worse than”) 100,000 lacks accuracy?

    Anyway, I agree these differences are just too huge to use the word “accurate” together with Alexa.

    ~Marcus

    Marcus Hochstadt’s last blog post..MuVar Vs. Google Website Optimizer

    Was this comment useful to you ?

  2. Stephan Miller said

    April 24 2008 @ 12:08 pm

    But it is amazing how many sites and ad prices use this as a benchmark. How much would advertising go for on number 2 that gets almost a quarter of a million page views a month, with a 33% bounce rate, and an average of 4 minutes per visit based on an Alexa number of more than 500,000. Before the update, it was around 700,000.

    Was this comment useful to you ?

  3. Jim said

    April 24 2008 @ 2:56 pm

    Wow. That’s really weird. I’m sure you saw my recent Alexa post at theNetFool.com, but my results actually made sense, yours just don’t! That’s pretty odd and I definitely understand now why there has been so much unrest after the recent update

    Jim’s last blog post..An Intuitive Investment? - Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) is Poised to Grow in 2008

    Was this comment useful to you ?

  4. Stephan Miller said

    April 24 2008 @ 3:00 pm

    It has been like that all along. If you are using Alexa to determine a site’s traffic or value, there are some sleepers out there. We who stick to the tech/marketing side of the net will never know unless we search. I had the good luck to currently run an ecommerce site that gets 1000-1500 uniques a day in a big sleeper category. I woke up quick to the stupidity over Alexa.

    Was this comment useful to you ?

  5. kexbrown said

    April 24 2008 @ 6:19 pm

    In my opinion Alexa has never been close. And I agree, it still isn’t close. It can still be manipulated. The only reason I even spend any time at all with Alexa is because there are still people out there that think it is important. So, I have to work to keep my numbers low in case someone is swayed by the number.

    I can tell you one industry where no one uses the Alexa toolbar and that is home and garden. Nada, no one, zilch. Nice post!

    kexbrown’s last blog post..Win An Easy 50 Dollars | Win Cash, Win Entrecard Credits, Win Coffee Mugs, Win an Ad on Right Nav Bar

    Was this comment useful to you ?

  6. Pavan Kumar said

    April 24 2008 @ 9:04 pm

    Let Alexa read your post…. with all proofs to prove that it is a shit!

    Pavan Kumar’s last blog post..Trace anonymous phone numbers with TP2Location

    Was this comment useful to you ?

  7. Tom Lindstrom said

    April 25 2008 @ 8:00 am

    My alexa stats (196000) got better after the change, but as it seems to be so unreliable when the stats can jump up to the millions all of a sudden, what´s the whole idea? I don´t get it.

    Was this comment useful to you ?

  8. Profitable Stock Trading said

    April 25 2008 @ 1:01 pm

    Toolbars, toolbars. I refuse to use them. Everyone wants a piece of my real estate. Putting THEIR toolbars (Alexa, Google, whatever) is just advertising for THEM and does ME no good. Maybe if they gave me #1 SERP for my terms, I might reconsider. :-)

    Was this comment useful to you ?

  9. Backlink Builder said

    April 27 2008 @ 6:40 am

    Try to submit your link to more Blog directory’s the more links to your homepage makes your alexa ranking more stable.

    Backlink Builder’s last blog post..Giving away a free linkbuilding ebook!

    Was this comment useful to you ?

  10. Stephan Miller said

    April 27 2008 @ 12:44 pm

    I could do that but that defeats the point of my post which is that the value that Alexa numbers have is a false value. Nothing substantial should be based on these numbers. I am not worried about the Alexa ranking of these sites. I don’t depend on the type of advertising that uses Alexa as a benchmark. I am just saying to those that do to be careful. These sites make money from visitors, plain and simple. Alexa numbers don’t change that. And I am very happy and lucky that my monetization methods don’t depend on them.

    Was this comment useful to you ?

  11. Craig said

    April 29 2008 @ 1:19 pm

    I find Alexa to be pretty useless.
    From a advertiser standpoint the numbers are just too easy to manipulate.
    From a publisher perspective you are going to have much more reliable numbers from some kind of plugin that tracks visitors.

    Was this comment useful to you ?

  12. Backlink Builder said

    May 3 2008 @ 3:27 am

    Stephan Miller, Submitting to directories isnt just for alexa rank, its for other SE’s too.

    Backlink Builder’s last blog post..Attract traffic with a contest

    Was this comment useful to you ?

  13. Latest Technology said

    May 22 2008 @ 2:27 am

    I wonder if you are looking at the 3 month average numbers, the 1 week average numbers or the past day one? If you are using the 3 month figure, is your Google Analytics set to 3 months as well?

    Latest Technology’s last blog post..New Light Source that can Last 12 Years

    Was this comment useful to you ?

  14. Stephan Miller said

    May 22 2008 @ 5:11 am

    The Alexa numbers were 3 months. The Analytics were one month, but since I run the analytics on all these sites, I can tell you that that the numbers were not that much different for the other two months.

    Alexa doesn’t have a clue.

    Was this comment useful to you ?

Comment RSS · TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Note: All new comments held for moderation which usually happens within a day.

Name: (Required)

eMail: (Required)

Website:

Comment:


This blog uses the CommentLuv plugin which will try and parse your sites feed and display a link to your last post, please be patient while it tries to find it for you.