In Defense Of Alexa

Ken's Blog

Alexa must be the most maligned, useful service online.  Webmasters seem to enjoy dismissing it as "useless."  They usually give their own sites as examples, as if a sample size of one means anything in the world of mathematics.  Or they explain how it can be gamed, as if that totally invalidates this valuable tool.

In fact, when you do a proper study involving tens of thousands of sites, such as we do with Site Build It! sites, there is an excellent correlation between the number of visitors that a site receives and the Alexa traffic ranking.

And Geoffrey Mack, who writes the Alexa blog, showed a different kind of correlation between ranking and traffic in a post two days ago.  His post focused on the tight correlation of traffic and Alexa ranking for two sites with excellent rankings (Top 1000) over a period of time.

While useful, it was a touch disingenuous.  Any two sites can be chosen to prove a point.  And top-ranking Alexa sites have, due to the volumes of traffic, less scatter (i.e., a better correlation.)

So let's get to the bottom of this.  Alexa is a tremendously valuable tool, if you understand how it works, including the nature of its sampling and therefore its bias.  With that under your belt, you will find true value in Alexa.

Alexa is not, of course, perfect.   Perhaps Webmasters seek perfection?  If so, then many things in life, business and yes, even the tech world, are going to disappoint.

Alexa results do, of course, display scatter, meaning that some sites with better Alexa traffic rankings get less traffic than other sites with poorer rankings.  That's normal in the world of statistics.

And the worse (higher) the Alexa traffic ranking, the more scatter you get (i.e., the wider the variance between Alexa ranking and actual traffic).

So what?  That's normal in the world of statistics, too.  Factor it in when interpreting.

What about those who worry about "gaming" Alexa?  My answer is, "to what point?"  Manipulating Alexa to generate a better traffic ranking does not change your actual traffic.  So why do it?...

To fool potential advertisers?  Any half-smart advertiser will, in a one-month trial, be able to detect impressions and clicks.  So suppose a (falsely) great Alexa site has no traffic.  The results will quickly show up...  No impressions and no click-throughs.  No payment and no ongoing relationship.

Conclusion
Alexa is a powerful tool, if you know how to use it. Those who dismiss Alexa as "useless" are simply missing out on a great tool.  Please see this article that explains more about Alexa, how and why we use it, and how you can get the most out of it.

All the best,

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Comments

[Alex Sysoef]

Great post Ken.

Any tool can be manipulated and any result can be presented in different ways, depends on which point one is trying to prove.

Quite frankly I don’t pay too much attention to Alexa ranking as a comparison to other sites but I do check on it once in a while, to monitor the trend of my sites. I also heavily participate in Internet marketing and I can tell you one thing – marketers pay close attention to that tool.

Any recent product lunch that had a JV blog made sure to point out position of a launch site in Alexa. That tells you something! Also as you mentioned in your post any analysis tool can only be taken in its face value, i.e. in my opinion Alexa is great at trend determination. Provide you with samplings on how YOUR specific site performs over time period and that is the most useful aspect of it for me.

Alex

[Brian Adamson]

Well said Ken.

However, I have a different concern regarding Alexa, which has proven (to me) its usefulness over the years.

Recently, when checking the Alexa stats displayed on my site, I received a message from Amazon saying that this free service was being discontinued, i.e. I will shortly no longer be able to display my Alexa ranking on my site unless I pay Amazon.

Given that Amazon are amongst the worst examples of what NOT to do with an affiliate program (at least, in my view :0) I have no desire to pay them.
Is this something that has already come to the attention and if so, do you have any suggestions as to how to overcome it.
Thanks as ever
Brian

[Jeff Johnston]

Hi Brian.

Your post had me concerned, so I did some investigating. All I could find on the Alexa site with reference to paying for anything was for the Alexa Site Thumbnail Service.

"Put thumbnail images of web sites onto your own web site using the Alexa Site Thumbnail web service. This web service allows developers to enhance web sites, search results, web directories and other web real estate by adding thumbnail images of web sites. You can sign up for the service through Amazon Web Services."

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=236156011

Is that what you were referring to? That's not the same as adding your own ranking to your home page. I was able to create one of those for my site for no charge.

Jeff Johnston