Howdy all- What's considered a good Alexa rank? I've had conflicting answers. Some say under 750k, others say under 500k and still others say lower, 300k or less.

Also- Do you consider it a dependable metric of a site's popularity?

Thanks!

1000 and below is considered a good Alexa rank . Frankly it depends on your perception of how big a site shd be. Everyone's perception will be different.

Alexa is not a dependable metric.

Why is that?

Alexa's rankings are determined by the people using the Alexa toolbar.. So only those people can contribute to the ranking of any one site.. If you have a site that does not attract the type of people that would install the Alexa toolbar, then you will never have a good Alexa rank..

Or, you could install the Alexa toolbar on a dozen computers, or more, and have your friends start visiting your website more often.. It's easy to game..

If you still love alexa, try to take the top 100k sites as the better ones and rank under 100k as a good rank/

Feydakin- Thanks for that clarification, I didn't realize that. Any suggestions on a way to measure a site's popularity relative to other sites?

Don't worry about other sites and how well (or not) they are doing.

Care about your site more, check your site logs, track your sales or conversion rate.
You can't bank "popularity ratings"

As Chris said, what someone else does is irrelevant to you being successful or not.. The more time you spend focused on them leaves less time for you to focus on you and your goals..

Worry about how many sales you are making or how to improve your web site traffic. Alexa ranking is not a good marker for a site's importance.

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Thanks for the feedback everyone, I appreciate it. I completely agree with you. However, that wasn't why I was asking.

I'm wondering this because we're considering advertising on some sites/blogs and I'd like to confirm the traffic they say they have before we spend the money and time. So, with that in mind, what are your thoughts? (other than this is probably a rookie question )

I'm not sure there's really an accurate way to get another site's traffic. A lot of tools (Alexa included) will attempt to measure site traffic, but without the cooperation of the site in question they all have to guess a little.

You can try comparing Alexa or Compete data to other sites in the same industry and get a feel for where they are in relation to each other. If your site is in the same industry you could compare with your site since you know your own traffic. Don't put too much faith into any of the numbers, though.

Tools like Alexa are skewed when it comes to real numbers because only certain people will install their toolbars. Typically web savvy people so tech savvy sites usually show more traffic than they really have. However if you compare two tech sites to each other chances are the one with the better Alexa or Compete ranking does get more traffic. Doesn't have to and again the numbers shouldn't be trusted, but it's ok for a quick judgment.

What you might do with the advertising is simply buy it for a short time, maybe a month or two. Set up something to track how often the ad is viewed and then after the month or two is up you'll know the numbers and can re-evaluate buying the ads longer or negotiating over the price.

OK, I was afraid that was going to be the answer. I 'll use those as rough barometers of traffic and then put my tippy toes in the water before jumping in and making any long term advertising commitments.

Thanks!

The best Alexa rank is 1.

The only real way to measure the value of the advertising is to go for it on a short term and monitor it.

If it isn't working, then rethink the strategy.

Hey Tamar- That was pretty funny!

Originally Posted by tamar

The best Alexa rank is 1.

Then google sucks with alexa? It ranks no. 2

Originally Posted by sizzler_chetan

Then google sucks with alexa? It ranks no. 2

Yup. Google is teh suck!

(typo intended)

Anything under 1,000,000 is good but Alexa rank can be easily manipulated.