How does Alexa measure traffic

**EngAdven** · 01-06-2007, 06:38 PM

I've read the concerns about the accuracy of Alexa and know from my own experience that it does not always tie in with actual site stats. But does anyone really know how it measures traffic.
If people are tricking it then they obviously know something although I'm not interested in fooling it myself.
I actually prefer to watch it's performance than Google analytics. It's peaks can be extreme but often correspond to actual sales peaks so I'd like to know how it measures that.
Anyone got some inside knowledge?

**mikesilvia** · 01-07-2007, 03:58 AM

Alexa is based on visitors with the Alexa toolbar or Alexa cookie. Think of Alexa as a rating system much like TV. They are using a small sample of the population and showing you stats. Google Analytics is a much better tool in my opinion for seeing you webstats like pageviews and visitors.

Alexa can be cheated in many ways. If you have a bunch of moderators or friends that visit your site make sure they have the Alexa toolbar installed. The more people with the Alexa toolbar, the higher your Alexa score. The one problem? Most spyware will remove the Alexa coolie unless you tell it not to.

Mike

**EngAdven** · 01-07-2007, 09:35 AM

Thanks Mike
I didn't know there was an Alexa toolbar. If that's all it is then I guess it's always going to be a bit limited.
I've always assumed Google is monitoring our travels through its toolbar and half thought Alexa might be tapping into their stats.
Do you think some of the big player exchange information on our surfing habits?

**Hostnetric** · 01-07-2007, 01:00 PM

This same discussion just came up this week on another forum I frequent alot and alot of people were not aware of how Alexa got the results for its rankings. They have an article on their site at http://alexa.com/site/help/?index=12 that explains how it works.

**hhheng** · 01-31-2007, 03:49 AM

Alexa rank is useless and meaningless if your rank is bigger than 10K. My website only gets 40 unique IPs per day, but the rank is 210,961.

**willcode4beer** · 09:19 AM

Thanks for the great explanation of Alexa.
It helps me understand a lot more about my traffic and bizarrely low Alexa rating. According to google analytics, 80% of my sites visitors use Firefox (no alexa toolbar).
I also think at least 60% of my visitors have ad blocking software because, according to my logs, I actually get more than double the visitors with a unique IP, than unique visitors reported by Google analytics. Because of proxies, I'd expect the unique IPs to be lower.

My logs show several hundred unique IPs per day yet, I'm in the 2million range on Alexa

Ahh, the wild wild web...

**hiredesigner** · 02-08-2007, 01:49 AM

According to me more the hits, lesser will be the alexa ranking i.e less the alexa raking more is the popularity. For example msn is much popular then google thats why its ranking is 1 instead of 3.

**ADAM Web Design** · 02-08-2007, 01:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EngAdven

Do you think some of the big player exchange information on our surfing habits?

Depends on how well my tinfoil hat fits at the time.

If anything, there's a reason for them NOT to exchange the information. If big G has X information on me, and MSN wants it, is big G gonna cough it up? Not bloody likely. So I figure that, unless there are commercial alliances, most data collected stays internal. You've probably got bits and pieces of info on 1000 or more servers, but nothing anyone could put together unless they really had a lot of time on their hands.

That, and I personally don't give a **** what people know I surf for online. Hell, I show most people. I got nothing to hide. I POST most freakin' places I go.

**trichnosis** · 02-10-2007, 03:14 PM

in fact alexa is nothink because alexa is company that shows the stats of web site with helping of people who use alexa toolbar . they can only show the habits of alexa toolbar users. there are millions of people whose are not using alexa toolbar

**audiomad** · 04-16-2007, 05:02 AM

Ive noticed that when I do a search for my site on the Alexa search engine that my rank goes up because there crawl bot ends up on my server logs

I like the information that they give too it better than what google offer Ive gained over 3 million places since I started on the alexa search engine was 5 millon'th its good but also shows you where you are ranked in specific countries Im ranked 4,800 in Ireland going up by 200 every 2 days now

**chrishirst** · 04-16-2007, 05:06 AM

And do you have the alexa toolbar installed by some chance ???

**audiomad** · 04-16-2007, 05:19 AM

no dont use it on the alexa search engine site it says that when you want to add your site to there directory that all you have to do is start a search i use site:url which shows all the pages which makes the crawl bot work in return ive read that to keep search engines intrested in your website that you have to do searchs for your site seems to work for me.

**chrishirst** · 04-16-2007, 06:30 AM

Quote:

ive read that to keep search engines intrested in your website that you have to do searchs for your site

What a load of BS

the only things that keeps crawlers coming to your site are links.

**audiomad** · 04-16-2007, 06:55 AM

who knows every site ive came across all say different things its just an seo world

**chrishirst** · 04-16-2007, 07:00 AM

Quote:

every site ive came across all say different things

You are obviously reading at the wrong places.

**audiomad** · 04-16-2007, 07:06 AM

who knows its just an seo world

**Vasity** · 04-16-2007, 11:49 AM

there are alot of different factors.

**sheena** · 04-20-2007, 04:09 AM

Alexa.com offers a fascinating ranking system that provides a quantitative measure of your site's traffic.Alexa.com collects web traffic information through users of the Alexa Toolbar and extrapolates the results. Because Alexa Toolbar is Windows-only, the results may tend to under-report web traffic to sites such as ours whose visitors are 61% Macintosh.
The traffic is based on historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users

http://www.creativetechs.com/tips/qu...-business.html

**seolman** · 04-24-2007, 06:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sheena

Alexa.com offers a fascinating ranking system that provides a quantitative measure of your site's traffic.Alexa.com collects web traffic information through users of the Alexa Toolbar and extrapolates the results. Because Alexa Toolbar is Windows-only, the results may tend to under-report web traffic to sites such as ours whose visitors are 61% Macintosh.
The traffic is based on historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users

http://www.creativetechs.com/tips/qu...-business.html

Thanks for the details. I always thought they just ran those black rubber hoses charged with air across the road that added one car for each 2 drive-overs...

**Gracia** · 04-25-2007, 05:54 AM

Remember that Alexa can only measure the traffic to browsers, or users, who have the Alexa toolbar installed. Therefore the results reflect the browing habits, or activities, of those people. This subset of people may not be typical of the general browsing population at large.