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Alexa results...

by aygabtu
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I've been monitoring my Alexa results for my sites. While my traffic is steadily increasing, my results are stagnant. This is especially true of the three month results. Looking back 3 months ago, my site is getting 3-4 times the number of unique visitors and pageviews, yet somedays the Alexa rank will actually go up, but the trend over the last 2 weeks has been stuck in the same range.

How can my traffic be 3-4 times what it was, but Alexa is going no where?
#alexa #results
  • Profile picture of the author Seekness
    A. Alexa gives a decent measure of traffic to a site, but it's still just an estimate and never entirely accurate. Visitors need to have the toolbar installed, and it's possible that a bigger percentage of your visitors in past weeks had the toolbar on their computers.

    B. A three month average covers the span of 90 days, so each individual day only counts for about 1% of the weighted average. One day becomes less significant as your rank increase (lower number), and it sometimes takes more time to see a bigger shift.

    I wouldn't sweat it. This happens to me all the time. In the end, if your uniques are steadily going up, your rank will reflect this - but it may take a bit of time before it does in light of the above two factors.
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    • Profile picture of the author aygabtu
      Originally Posted by dandee0014 View Post

      A. Alexa gives a decent measure of traffic to a site, but it's still just an estimate and never entirely accurate. Visitors need to have the toolbar installed, and it's possible that a bigger percentage of your visitors in past weeks had the toolbar on their computers.

      B. A three month average covers the span of 90 days, so each individual day only counts for about 1% of the weighted average. One day becomes less significant as your rank increase (lower number), and it sometimes takes more time to see a bigger shift.

      I wouldn't sweat it. This happens to me all the time. In the end, if your uniques are steadily going up, your rank will reflect this - but it may take a bit of time before it does in light of the above two factors.
      I understand your point, but I still don't understand how can my unique visitors be around 250-300 per day 3 months ago and now they are 900+ and my 3 month numbers not always trending better? I can't believe that I had more traffic with Alexa with far fewer users 3 months ago than I do now.

      No wonder a lot of people don't put a lot weight against the numbers. Why doesn't google have metrics from everyone's google analytics? At least those are far more real and accurate.
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      • Profile picture of the author Seekness
        Originally Posted by aygabtu View Post

        I understand your point, but I still don't understand how can my unique visitors be around 250-300 per day 3 months ago and now they are 900+ and my 3 month numbers not always trending better? I can't believe that I had more traffic with Alexa with far fewer users 3 months ago than I do now.

        No wonder a lot of people don't put a lot weight against the numbers. Why doesn't google have metrics from everyone's google analytics? At least those are far more real and accurate.
        Rather than focus on day to day, see where your numbers are in a month or two. It's not like the numbers jumped from 250-300 visitors/day to 900+ overnight, so it may take time for the change to truly show itself. You can always look at other sources like Quantcast and Compete in the meantime...but most importantly, hopefully your site's now earning 3x as much as it was before due to the increase in traffic. Unless you're looking to sell the site soon, I wouldn't pay much attention to your Alexa rank anyway - and if you are, it still doesn't hold much weight if you can prove your traffic through Google Analytics, and more importantly, steady monthly earnings.
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        • Profile picture of the author aygabtu
          Originally Posted by dandee0014 View Post

          Rather than focus on day to day, see where your numbers are in a month or two. It's not like the numbers jumped from 250-300 visitors/day to 900+ overnight, so it may take time for the change to truly show itself. You can always look at other sources like Quantcast and Compete in the meantime...but most importantly, hopefully your site's now earning 3x as much as it was before due to the increase in traffic. Unless you're looking to sell the site soon, I wouldn't pay much attention to your Alexa rank anyway - and if you are, it still doesn't hold much weight if you can prove your traffic through Google Analytics, and more importantly, steady monthly earnings.
          Actually, that is the sad thing. I am making about the same amount per month even though my traffic increases between 25-50% per month. My users are loyal, so they don't tend to click ads to leave the site. I also don't want to put more ads on the site because I want this to be #1 in its nitch and the more ads or placement of ads may detract some people from using the site.

          I have other site ideas in the works that I won't worry as much about ad placement.
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  • Profile picture of the author harro1
    Alexa rankings depends upon your site niche, weight loss site with high traffic will have bad alexa as compared to webmaster related website receiving 10 times less traffic because most webmasters have alexa toolbar installed.
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  • Profile picture of the author jefftardif
    I don't know what's your niche (seems to be games), but if it fits, you can ask your visitors to install the Alexa Tool bar for whatever reason... I have a blog related website, and I talked to my visitors about installing the Alexa toolbar to see websites rank live while browsing. Put this advice directly in their control panel... My rank increased significantly.
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  • Profile picture of the author dvduval
    I have one site that ranks around 7000 of Alexa, and another that ranks about 80000. The one with 80000 gets more traffic.
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    • Profile picture of the author datemyride
      When I launched my Datemyride site in October 2010 and Killerstartups and Thrillist featured it within that one month site's Alexa rank went down (which is better) to 380,000. Then in Dec and beginning of Jan 2011 traffic dipped a little and since then Alexa rank has been going up an up. My traffic has been and still is around 200 - 300 uniques per day but Alexa rank has been going up and my site now is 2,500,000 something. According to Compete my site's rank is 350,000 something which is more in line with the actual traffic. Alexa is weird and I don't pay much attention to it anymore because I do get unique visitor, they are registering and my Adsense revenue is going up for the last 3 months.

      To summarize it, I think Alexa ranking is related to good quality backlinks of your site. And it's not really worth of paying attention to its ranking.
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  • Profile picture of the author jbhyip
    Unless you are in the top 100k, Alexa ranking can be deceptive. Where is your traffic increase coming from? If you get a lot of traffic from traffic exchange, alexa may not count it. You can also go to compete.com and quantcast.com to check your traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author App Developers
    Have you shut down your browser and opened it back up? I noticed my alexa rating doesn't change until I have clicked out of my browser and then click back in. It doesn't work if I leave my browser open all the time and open a new tab. Not sure why or how but that is what happens to me. I now shut down the browser once a week or more.
    hope that helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author jonnyhardbaked
    Alexa is not that accurate when it comes to counting traffic. Much better if you use other tools in determining your traffic.
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