Don’t Rate A Site Based on an Alexa Rating, because Alexa doesn’t really Rate Much of Anything

Alexa’s Rating system, doesn’t really rate much of anything

Op/Ed by Not Luke- First question- Do you have an Alexa toolbar on your computer? No? Do you know what an Alexa tool bar is? No? Well you better keep reading….

I’m a writer. What I know about being a webmaster has come from neccesity and smart friends. When it comes to traffic, and hits, and stats, I’m almost clueless. So when I saw my Alexa rating take these huge nose dives, and then climb back up and then dive again I wondered what the hell I was doing wrong.

I also get information from Google, and it showed my readership slowly and steadily going UP.

So WTF?

Well I asked my super smart friend Techman to explain to me how Alexa worked. When he did, I couldn’t believe that people relied on this totally subjective app to base anything on.

Here’s what he said-

So what the hell is the deal about Alexa anyway?

OP/ED by Techman


Alexa (http://www.alexa.com) is a site that reports on internet usage. Alexa is owned by Amazon, and was originally a company designing a new, alternative method of human powered internet search.  Alexa generates its reports on sites by gathering information from people who have either the Alexa toolbar (IE) or the Alexa Sidebar (Firefox and Mac).  The Alexa tool gathers information from the sites that the user visits and reports these back to Alexa.  Alexa then takes this information and generates reports on individual websites, ranking them by number of visits, reach, and a variety of other metrics. 

The problem with this method is two fold.

1)    It uses a limited audience that must opt-in to use the tool.  Now if the segment of audience generated by this method is enough of a cross-section of internet users, then you could get some accurate numbers as a result, but this is not likely and Alexa is not forthcoming with any of it’s audience makeup to allow an accurate judgment to be made.  And since the tool requires an opt-in, it is far too easy to generate out results with a  strong statistical bias.  While Alexa also maintains that they use “other information” in creating the site rankings, this information too is not readily available, so it’s difficult to determine how accurate that information is.
2)    It doesn’t track any further metrics other that the site visit.  While this can be helpful in certain circumstances, it does not give any insight into user behaviour once they are in the site.  It does not track length of visit, repeat vistis, or any other usage information.

As a rough guideline (emphasis on “rough”) of site popularity Alexa may have some value, but as a singular method of determining site usage, or accurate audience usage, Alexa leaves a great deal to be desired.  

As an aside I want to add that several computer security sites list the Alexa Toolbar as trackware and suspicious-
 
McAfee Site Advisor <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAfee_Site_Advisor> rates the Alexa website as yellow, with the warning, /"In our tests, we found downloads on this site that some people consider adware, spyware or other potentially unwanted programs,"/.^[22] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexa_Internet#cite_note-21> (from wikipedia.org)

8 thoughts on “Don’t Rate A Site Based on an Alexa Rating, because Alexa doesn’t really Rate Much of Anything

  1. If I made money off my blog, then it would bother me. But I stopped caring about Alexa a while ago. But they are what people look at before advertising on a site. My best month was January and is still at that level now. But Alexa says I’m down across the board. I’m also higher on Quantcast and through my WordPress dashboard too. Except Alexa.

  2. freepornstarpix says:

    It is well known that Alexa rankings can be artificially inflated.

  3. What a crock of shit Alexa is and always has been. I was writing about the Alexa Myth years ago on my simplyjimmyd blog. Ya mean people STILL pay attention to the Great Alexa Lie? The supposed importance of Alexa was a load of crap mostly propagated by the likes of the original Lukey, Voltron, aka, Chico Wang (RIP), and other practitioners of porn news/gossip/bullshit, e.g., South and Ross. I called bullshit then and I call it now! And no, like the VAST majority of the rest of the cyber-world, I don’t have an Alexa toolbar on my computer.

  4. freepornstarpix says:

    There are alternatives to Alexa, like Quantcast

  5. The Colonel says:

    Personally, I wouldn’t count on Alexa or any other rating system for that matter to draw a solid conclusion. Basically datas are easy to manipulate and can be interpreted to serve almost any, and often contrary purposes. Remember how the Bush administration kept twisting datas untill the very end to fool the country and avoid discussing the recession, while at the same time independent economists were using the same data to warn the country about the deepening recession.

  6. Alexa changed its algorithm to include ISP data, in addition to info from toolbar users, kind of a long time ago. Alexa, like pretty much all benchmarking tools, is thought to be gameable. To get a good idea of where a site one does not own is at, it makes sense to utilize a number of benchmarks to get an accurate ballpark.

    For example, if one does not trust that LukeIsBack.com is influential just from its high 52k Alexa, then the 22,274 Yahoo tracked links to LukeIsBack.com also demonstrate strong reach. Basically, no one tool is going to be perfect and close Alexas are fundamentally the same number, but Alexa is still a useful tool to have in the toolbox when benchmarking.

  7. JimmyD told me years ago…Alexa don’t mean Jack! How Y’All doin’ ??

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