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Do you rely on Alexa ranking?

If so, then you’ve probably noticed the traffic ranking seem fishy and inaccurate at times. In fact, it’s probably most accurate for the top 100,000 websites because these sites are generally popular anyway. However, it should not be relied on so much for your website or any site as the ranking can be manipulated by installing the Alexa toolbar and visiting your site daily. You can probably also automate visits to your site by using proxies to boost website traffic.

You might have seen some sellers on eBay selling high ranking traffic sites by Alexa, it would be wise not to fall for these. They’ve probably manipulated the Alexa ranking system to pump artificial traffic and sell for quick cash. There are some programs that send tons of fake but unique visitors to your site to make it seem popular in a very short period.

How does Alexa determine ranking?

Instead of providing my own way of understanding how their system works, here is the answer to the question from Alexa’s website:

Alexa’s traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period. A site’s ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and pageviews. Reach is determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day. Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single pageview. The site with the highest combination of users and pageviews is ranked #1.

So to further simplify the above answer, Alexa achieves ranking by calculating how many pages were visited by users who have downloaded it’s toolbar. Once you’ve installed this on your browser, it collects general information like what sites were visited which is then calculated on the Alexa system. Alexa is still widely used by many webmasters, marketers and advertisers. It is not entirely useless but it does have limitations. You’ll find many advertisers who still determine whether it’s worth advertising on a specific site based on Alexa ranking.

Are there alternatives?

There are a few sites that are similar and like Alexa they have their limitations as well. The following is a list of few and what they’re known to be good for:

• Compete – Compete appears to be more accurate than Alexa simply because they use more ways and newer techniques to build ranking. The following is a snippet from their website describing how they collect and finalize ranking:

Compete estimates site traffic and engagement metrics based on the daily browsing activity of over 2,000,000 U.S. Internet users. Compete applies a rigorous normalization methodology, leveraging scientific multi-dimensional scaling (by age, income, gender and geography) to ensure metrics are representative of the U.S. Internet population. Compete members are recruited through multiple sources, including ISPs, the Compete Toolbar and additional opt-in panels to ensure a diverse distribution of user types and to facilitate de-biasing across the data sources.

• Comscore – maintains massive proprietary databases that provide a continuous, real-time measurement of the myriad ways in which the Internet is used and the wide variety of activities that are occurring online.
• Hitwise – Hitwise provides insights on how 10 million US Internet users interact with more than 1 million websites, across 165+ industries.
• Quantcast – Collects their data through partnerships, advertisers, publishers, ISPs, ASPs and other advertising networks.

It’s hard to tell which ones are a better alternative to Alexa. From my minimal research, it seems Alexa and Compete are more similar and both have some limitations but if used in combination, they are still a powerful research and marketing tool for many.