Alexa.com is a web site ranking system developed by Amazon.com. They do their best to figure out web traffic patterns and then rank sites from 1 to (I think) 10 million. The top 3 sites globally are:
- Yahoo
- YouTube
You can find a site rank by using the search box on their site. FireFox users have a better option. They can install a plugin called SearchStatus. Then you can view the Alexa Page Rank of any website you are visiting by moving your mouse over the bottom right corner of your browser. If you are interested in seeing trends, this is a useful tool. However, I can prove that Alexa is not accurate using three data points.
From March 1-14, here are the number of page views for 3 of my websites:
- DeepFitness.com: 11,589
- DigitalColony.com: 9,534
- CriticalMAS.com: 5,199
These are typical traffic numbers for a given two week period. One would expect DeepFitness, which has more than double the traffic as CriticalMAS to have a better (lower) Alexa score. In fact, CriticalMAS should have the worst (higher) Alexa score of the three sites. Nope.
Here are the Alexa.com Rage Ranks for the 3 domains as of this writing:
- CriticalMAS.com: 289,924
- DigitalColony.com: 330,229
- DeepFitness.com: 648,553
Alexa is a great tool for measuring trends and seeing approximately how well other sites are doing, but it isn’t the gospel on true rankings. The numbers get more accurate the lower (better) the ranking.
I’d be interested in seeing more data points. If you have a domain and access to page view numbers for the first 2 weeks of March, I’d be interested in seeing your Alexa rank and total page view count. Note this offer does not extend to SPAMMERS or people too cheap to buy their own domain (BlogSpot, Typepad, etc.).
Check out the Alexa FAQs on how the rankings are determined: http://www.alexa.com/site/help/?index=12
It is a much more complicated formula that just the 14 day hit rate. In my experience, Amazon usually has more intelligent metric calculations that most other companies or sites.
Good find. According to their FAQ, they use a 3 month window. Using that period, DigitalColony is (slightly) more popular than DeepFitness, but CriticalMAS still a distant 3rd.
DigitalColony = 59,532
DeepFitness = 56,723
CriticalMAS = 30,411
Still inaccurate.
Ok, read further…
“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.”
Changing the metric from page views to users had no impact on numbers.
Page Views per user ratios:
CriticalMAS = 1.43
DeepFitness = 1.42
DigitalColony = 1.42
I hope I’m not being hard on AMAZON. As a site gets more and more popular, I would place greater confidence in their rankings. It is a useful tool for trending.
I’m not sure how you are calculating accuracy or confidence in this case, an objective measurement is needed to do that and there does not seem to be an “industry standard” that I have encountered. It’s obvious that Alexa is using a different algorithm that other sites and provides static rankings at a point in time. Check out the 7 day and 30 day stats on http://www.meetup.com and see if you still disagree with it’s “accuracy”
I’ve only had experience with domains in the 180K – 1,000 K rankings. INeedCoffee has been steady between 180K-200K for years. I put more confidence in that ranking than my other domains, because its traffic is much higher and more steady.
After getting my computer back from the shop and my hard drive was wiped clean. I had to resort to memory to find my web links. The only clue I came up with for this site was the word “MAS”. So I typed in “MAS blog” in google. It didn’t come up. Then I remembered the word “menos”. So I typed in “MAS and menos” then It came up on the bottom of the first page. I was getting worried there for a minute, how could I possibly stay informed?
Ed -
Thanks for bringing that to my attention. The next post is for you.
Ed -
If you use a web based RSS reader like GOOGLE READER or BlogLines, you can subscribe once and never lose contact. Those readers will alert you to new posts.
Okay thanks
Alexa rankings can’t be the sole determinants of measuring a sites importance and popularity as the http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main/fortunehotels.in rankings do not take into account all the browser types like Windows Vista etc.