How Accurate Is Alexa.org?
We all seem to rely on web ranking services, in valuing domains we are looking to acquire and one of the tools many domainers use, including myself, is Alexa.org
Alexa.org basically uses the information from those who have downloaded its toolbar (and specifically allowed Alexa to use the info) as a sample of Internet usage and than ranks sites by estimated traffic based off those users. I have been a user of the Alexa toolbar for many years and allow my info to go back to Alexa.
We know that the Alexa rankings, like the Nielsen ratings are to TV, are based on a sampling of users.
Over the last month I have been working from Costa Rica and I noticed something quite interesting.
If you pull up a full Alexa stats page on a site, Alexa not only gives you a three month average rank, but also a rank for the domain by country, for the most popular countries in which the domain is viewed.
According to Alexa.org, which ranks TheDomains.com as 56,395 (3 month average), thedomains.com is ranked as the 1,898 most popular site in Costa Rica.
Costa Rica is largely a Spanish speaking country, and frankly although I would like to think that everyone in the world reads this blog, we know that there is no way this blog has that type of saturation in Costa Rica.
By comparison, TheDomains.com is ranked 20,380 in the US (thanks everyone) and 13,599 in Austria (danke) and 22,788 in Canada (i love hockey).
Another site I visit everyday is domaining.com which has an Alexa rank of 63,395 and is currently the 4,943 most popular site in Costa Rica.
Contrast this to blogs I only read once a week like Elliotsblog.com (sorry Elliot), which has almost an identical 3 month Alexa ranking of 57,492, but does not have an Alexa ranking in Costa Rica nor does domainnamenews.com, which also has a similar Alexa ranking of 59,280, but has no Alexa rank in Costa Rica.
Bottom line, is how accurate is Alexa?
How much weight do they give to each registered user, if just one lonely user in Costa Rica can move the numbers so dramatically in just 30 days.
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What I noticed is if the site is focused to an internet theme then it allways have less traffic his Alexa ranking let suggest.
For example, a 20k ranking in a site about home improvement means really much more traffic then the same ranking in a site about banner ad design for example.
Normal, Alexa mainly ranks sites based in the data gathered from their toolbars and they are mainly used by internet geeks.
I like the Google Ad Planner tool:
https://www.google.com/adplanner/
I think Google takes data from his toobars, Google analytics, … so the info being larger is maybe more accurate.
Regarding domaining.com the traffic is almost the same today, that 3, 6, 9… months ago.
Our traffic are the same visitors that come days after days, the amount of new visitors is very low, probably outlining the fact domaining is not attracting more adepts.
In mind mind, Alexa is a useless and most misleading resource and tool(bar).
The only way Alexa (or any Alexa-type service) would be accurate is if they provided an analytics script (similar to Google Analytics) which site owners would integrate on their pages. And in order to make accurate comparisons between and among other sites (or the Internet community for that matter), those sites would also need to have the same (Alexa or other) analytics script on their site. For obvious reasons, this will never happen! Therefore, Alexa and all Alexa-type sites serve no “real” purpose in the Internet community. They’re simply self-fulfilling prophecies!
I agree that Alexa is mostly useless. For U.S. sites, I’d use Compete.com. Google Ad Planner is getting better, and I’d use it before alexa.
Agree with Andrew, Alexa can be deceiving since getting ten of your friends together to download the toolbar then clicking on the same site will get the Alexa ranking higher.
So, what good is it.
Kind of like Howard Stern fans voting for Sanjaya. That doesn’t make Sanjaya a better singer.
Rob
You say sanjaya, i say votefortheworst.com
looks like a couple domainers were vacationing in Costa Rica recently
Not very accurate.