Alexa and such
 

Very Odd, I'm sure I wrote a post about this some hours ago, but now I can't find it. Here we go again....

I was checking an affiliate and decided, for fun, to check their sites against Google PR, Alexa (and some other shit I've installed in Chrome)

None of their sites had good Alexa ranking. (My brand new, almost none promoted Blog does better....) We're talking from 2.5million down to something 17million in alexa ranking. None of the sites had more than PR1. And their Aff-site actually scored the best.

I know a lot of you say Alexa sucks, these things doesn't matter anymore and so on, but;
How to read these numbers?
are these sites with almost no visitors at all? (I know we can't read memberships outta this)

J:)lly

Alexa uses info from users that have the alexa toolbar installed.
Hardly an even cut of all internet users.
That's why it's bullshit info.

Aha!

Thx :)

Jolly

BTW,

any services online that "spies" on sites traffic?
Would be interesting to know.

And regarding toolbars... hate'em. Who in their right mind installs that shit?
Clearly haven't done my homework, I knew about the alexa toolbar, but didn't know *all* info relied on it being installed. Lesson learned

Jolly

Google Analytics would be the best for you to spy your traffic. :pimp

Another good method to get a general idea about someone else's traffic is to check if they have any CPM type ads like Juicy, Ero, Exoclick, etc. and check out their impressions and geographic stats in those site's marketplaces.

try this, statcounter.com is the best static site ..

yeah I use statcounter. I like it

Thanks for answers!

Jolly

Alexa is what it is. An excellent way to get a quick and rough traffic estimate. Even though Alexa uses the toolbar user info as it's primary source of data, they use other factors when projecting their estimates.

Alexa is now a tool of Google and the numbers are skewed to benefit them. I believe Alexa is O.K. for a good quick reference on how you are doing compared to the past 3 month of traffic stats but I wouldn't use it base who you would do business with. A site can have a shitty overall Alexa ranking but get a great amount of adult traffic.

This will tell you about how well a site is doing in the serps:

http://www.semrush.com/search.php

Alexa is good for a lot of things but its 3 months behind and also only from people with the tool bar installed. And let me just say, a LOT of people have that installed.

Just visit a neighbors house and see. Most likely they have 3 or 4 others as well.

Forget alexa crap. There's CompeteDOTcom ( as well as SemRush as suggested by other user ) for much more reliable data