Today is my first day ranked as an Alexa top 100,000 site. When I started blogging, I didn’t really know much about what all the rankings meant, but I knew that I wanted to get my Alexa Rank in the top 100,000 because that was their cutoff for caring about your site.
I have read several articles about how Alexa ranking was useless, but never took it to heart. While I don’t hold Alexa in the same high esteem as I did when I first started, I still believe Alexa ranking provides great information about the type of traffic you have.
Above are the graphs for Alexa and my Google Analytics traffic for the last 30 days. The first thing you’ll notice with Alexa is I have major spikes about once a week. You’ll also notice the huge spike on Oct 31 (who would have thought Halloween would have been my highest traffic day to date).
Strangely, Alexa doesn’t really reflect the huge traffic spike. In fact, on days where I had less than 1/6th of the traffic, I had nearly the same Alexa rank.
Alexa Gives Quality Information About The Type Of Traffic On A Site
Clearly Alexa isn’t a perfectly reliable source for traffic volume ranking. It does, however, give you an idea of the type of traffic you are getting. Alexa tracks a few things Analytics doesn’t specifically track.
Analytics will give you the referring site, but it doesn’t tell you what other sites visitors have visited either just before or just after visiting yours. It isn’t the same as referring site or outbound links (although they will probably have some correlation). This is helpful if you have a lot of direct traffic, but what to know what other sites your visitors read.
Demographics are another thing Alexa tracks that Analytics doesn’t. Since not all visitors have Alexa, these demographics might not be totally accurate, but they are better than nothing. Knowing your audience is critical for success.
Finally, Alexa gives related links (if your site gets enough traffic for Alexa to recognize trends). This is helpful for finding other sites in your niche or other sites similar to ones you like to read.
Alexa definitely is not a reliable source for directly comparing traffic, but it does give you some decent point of comparison, and it tells you things about your visitors other tracking methods like Analytics and WP Stats might not include. That alone makes Alexa worth keeping an eye on.
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My blog is close to alexa rank of 10K and personally I can say now people who believes that alexa rank is directly propertional to traffic. It’s not like that.. Alexa rank determines by lots of factor
1. Alexa toolbar ( You will notice , Blogs related to blogging have great alexa rank, since most of the blogger use alexa toolbar)
2. Post frequency : Post frequency is again a big factor. You may see a website or blog with very huge traffic but alexa rank is not the same.
3. Constant traffic : If you have a consistent traffic, your alexa rank will increase with time, and traffic spikes will be a great factor to give a boost in between…
I almost mentioned that bloggers tend to have the Alexa toolbar, but I took it out. I totally agree that more tech/marketing related sites have a greater % of their visitors using the toolbar.
I hadn’t really noticed post frequency, but you’re probably right. That might be because sites that post more frequently get more pageviews (since Alexa gives value to both pageviews and unique visitors). If I had more traffic I would try running a couple of tests… Maybe later ;-)
Constant traffic seems to be one of the biggest deals. I’ve noticed that I get spikes in Alexa rank even when my traffic is staying consistent. Weird, but true.
I agree with Harsh on the post frequency part. My blog was ranking around 59K before I quit blogging regularly, went as low as 360K and now that I’ve been blogging regularly for the last month or so, it’s gone up to 130K. This definitely suggests a correlation between post frequency and alexa rank.
More than the Alexa toolbar, bloggers use the Search Status Firefox addon which also contributes to higher alexa rank.
Did your traffic fall off when your post frequency went down? I think some of the reason post frequency effects Alexa rank is your traffic probably tends to remain more stable.
What do you think?
Traffic did fall by about 10 to 15% but the fall in Alexa Rank as you already know is nowhere close (not proportional).
While many say that alexa is not a viable tool to measure a site’s traffic, I myself is using it as one of my gauge of the site’s reach. I monitor my alexa regularly and see if I’m improving or not.
I am hoping to further increase my alexa rank to below 100K. I think the key is constant update of posting.
The Debate is never ending. I`ll give a simple solution Google “Alexa is Irrelevant” You will find my Indepth research.
After that you can assume whatever you want to.
I don’t think Alexa is irrelevant. It is still a decent metric for determine the popularity of a site. I just think think sites within say, 10% of each other are always accurately compared.
The features other than rank are very helpful and worth taking a look at in my opinion.
The key things I look at:
1. percentage of traffic coming from organic search
2. relative ranking between what I consider related blogs.
Good point. Ironically, some of my best days search wise according to WP-Stats I’ve had 0 search traffic according to Alexa.
Either way, Alexa is great for a quick overview. It might not be as detailed as other stats and ranking services, but it is much faster to browse and get an idea of how thing are going.
I use alexa to quick view my blog visitors geographical source.
That’s a great point. Alexa is really handy for quickly determining a site’s geographic popularity.
But is it accurate? No algorithm can determine visitors accurately!
I think Google Analytics measures the geographic location of visitors for more accurately than Alexa, but Alexa is useful for a snapshot. Sometimes less details can be better.
I like that Alexa keeps track of keywords visitors use in reaching your blog. Don’t know how that compares with G. Analytics though.
I think G Analytics is far more accurate for keeping track of keywords. In fact, Analytics is far more accurate in every area of stat tracking. The downsite to Anaytics as that there is sometimes too much information.
Sometimes it is nice to just have a snapshot of traffic, reach, and search results.
Also, I don’t think Analytics offers upsteam/downstream visit tracking. I think it’s a pretty handy tool.
Thanks for sharing that data. My own experience is also that Alexa data has significant limitations; see http://www.markpack.org.uk/can-you-trust-alexa-and-google-trends/
Alexa does have some major limitations. To me, Alexa is more of a “who is my audience” tool and a snapshot tool than an absolute measurement tool.
Being able to quickly glance and see if you are growing is easy to do with Alexa. However, if you are looking for accuracy, Analytics is the best (as you commented on your blog, nice post btw).
I think Alexa does a few things we have to remember.. it judges traffic based on your reach or percentage of all the traffic. So on days where you personally got a lot of traffic perhaps so did everyone else. Maybe there was just a lot more people online on Halloween. I think that explains why spikes in Google analytics are not explained in Alexa.
Alexa measures your traffic percentage against the rest of the web!
Excellent point that I didn’t address at all about Alexa being a relative measurement of traffic, not absolute.
That in combination with the fact that Alexa only tracks people using their toolbar easily explains my Halloween “fluke.”
p.s. thanks for the stumble!
A lower Alexa number means a greater level of traffic, and the traffic drops off logarithmically. You can fake a good Alexa score using various techniques, but if it shows your rankings in the millions then your site likely has next to no traffic.
Congrats on breaking 100k. It was obviously inevitable.
Anyway, anyone who totally disregards Alexa is missing the point. It’s just one way to measure a site. It may not be gospel to some but it’s definitely a gauge that can be used check progression.
Thanks Gabe. You’re well on your way too :)
I think you really captured the essence of my post. While Alexa isn’t necessarily the most accurate measurement, it gives you a great measuring stick. To disregard it would be a huge mistake.
Hey very nice blog!! Man .. Beautiful .. Amazing .. I will bookmark your blog and take the feeds also…
Great article.
I check my alexa rank regulary but I don’t think that is a reliable source of information. As you stated above, it only tracks the traffic which uses the Sparky add-on for firefox or the alexa toolbar.
See you Blake.
Alexa rank is directly proportional to post frequency and I am totally agree with Harsh. Also I want to mention one point that Alexa rank may also depends on backlinks. More the backlinks, more traffic sources and good alexa rank. Its my analogy of last few months of blogging so never underestimate commenting on other blogs, it will help in boosting your alexa rank.
It seems like Alexa rank may be more complicated than just simply traffic. They include the stats like reach, page views, bounce rate, and time on page.
I think blog traffic is related to post frequency. While I haven’t been posting frequently, my traffic has naturally gone down, so my Alexa rank has suffered.
If I could keep the same traffic without changing my post frequency, I don’t think my Alexa rank would change. (Consider static sites that don’t have new content regularly, but still rank well)…
I do also wonder if backlinks matter since Alexa does record them…
agree with what Harsh said and i have also personally saw many blogging related blogs getting good with Alexa ranking with its daily updates and huge traffic coming on their way. Such blogs receives traffic mostly of webmasters with Alexa toolbar in their browser and so ultimately increasing their Alexa rank.
Congrats for your Alexa boost ;)
I check my Alexa ranking regularly and compare it to my top 2 local competitors. I like that I can see what countries the visitors come from and the traffic ranking for my country. But since I am a local service provider I find the map overlay in Google Analytics far more helpful in seeing if I’m reaching my target area.
Ever so slowly crawling up the alexa latter. I tend to find quantcast a much better show and tell since it allows public traffic stats.
Alexa ranking simply depends on the number of people who have downloaded the Alexa tool bar. If your visitors are not the type who have downloaded the toolbar, nor are they aware of Alexa, you’d get poor rankings in Alexa.
It was true years ago that Alexa used toolbar data only, but for a long time they’ve now publicly said they also take data from elsewhere.
So have you got any evidence that what you say is still true?
Alexa just gives approximate idea of the traffic for a website. You cant compare it to actual metrics. It is just for basic comparison and Alexa can be fooled too. One of my blogs gets just 15 pageviews per day and it ranks 300k on alexa. Isn’t that great ranking?
I don’t pay that much attention to alexa, I did read on their website that they base a lot of informayion on the number of links from different websites. For a while one of my sites was gettOne of my sites gets lots of love from googfle as far as traffic and yet alexa gives it a low rank….