Alexa Ranking is a site ranking assigned by Alexa Internet to measure websites’ popularity. It claims to use a number of factors in deciding the site popularity, but really it depends mainly on usage data collected by the Alexa toolbar.
The higher the ranking is, the smaller number is the rank given. Based on Alexa, Google (Alexa Ranking 1) will be the most popular website in the Internet, followed by Yahoo(2), Facebook(3), and Youtube(4).
You can see website Alexa Ranking in your browser after installing the Alexa toolbar or just check it at http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/yoursite.com (e.g. Alexa ranking for cheatad is at http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/cheatad.com)
How accurate is Alexa Ranking?
In a perfect world, Alexa’s user base would be a fair statistical sample of the Internet user population, and thus Alexa’s ranking should be quite accurate in comparing popularity of one site to another.
However, in reality Alexa Ranking is hardly reliable. Alexa ranks sites based on tracking information of users of its Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer and from plugins in Firefox. Thus it is greatly dependent on the number of Alexa toolbar installed among the site visitors.
Websites targeted to webmasters and web designers generally do better in Alexa Ranking compared to websites in other niche, e.g. food or pregnancy. That’s because webmasters are more willing to install the Alexa toolbar to check on the competitors’ Alexa ranking as well as to push up their own site’s ranking.
Internet users in some countries are also more willing to install the Alexa Toolbar compared to others. I have seen a Singapore website with 10k visitors a day ranked 60k in Alexa, while an Indonesian site with just 1k visitor a day ranked 30k in Alexa.
For comparison, let’s take these 2 similarly Alexa ranked website:
Site A
Alexa Rank : 389602
Actual Monthly Visitor: 31259
Site B
Alexa Rank : 288097
Actual Monthly Visitor: 3388
As you can see, site B pulled in just 10% of site A’s traffic, but ranked 100k higher than site A. (site B is cheatad.com)
How useful is Alexa Ranking?
Alexa ranking is really more about boasting right. Sites with higher ranking (smaller number) gain the perceived authority of popular website. That will probably affect your visitors decision on whether they want to link to your article in their own blog.
However, there are also actual situations when Alexa ranking can be useful:
1. when selling your website / domain name, Alexa rank is one of the main factor in determining the price
2. when selling your ad space to advertisers, it’s quite handy if you can show how your website rank higher compared to competitor
…
How about you? What’s your experience with Alexa Ranking? Let us know in the comment box below.
0 comments:
Post a Comment