alexa traffic stats are bullshit
 

when i check my own sites i see huge peeks and huge lows, but my own real stats show a solid number all the way through...... its official, alexa sucks donkey balls covered in sweat.

You know, I was thinking the same thing.

they have for a long time but just like google PR people who don't know any better thinks it matters.

we agree on the alexa stats, but PR is a whole other story... last few months i kinda got into seo and PR is pretty important

the PR displayed on google's toolbar is a completely different # than the PR google uses to determine SERP. most of the sites I've had that received the most google traffic have PR0, while almost all of my PR4 sites get little to no google traffic at all. I don't do much with seo atm but it seems like PR is greatly overrated

Yeah, thats right about the PR but it's interesting you should say that because I noticed that when my sites get higher PR their SERP ranking drops. When I first launch a site I get great SERP rankings for awhile then I disappear into the sandbox come out and I'm so-so rankings.. Then I get Pr3+ and I drop off the face of the earth.. on like page 20 :upsidedow

But by that time I'm #1 for like everything on Yahoo/MSN :upsidedow

Yes, figures are usually inaccurate, but overall I would say I find alexa very useful.

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yes, alexa is very useful
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Alexa traffic stats AFAIK are calculated somewhat along the lines of Nielsen ratings for TV viewing audiences, albeit with wider but less controlled sampling. There are some specific factors which can downgrade their reliability further, at least in the short-term and in particular for newly listed sites.

By coincidence I was looking into a site which was offered for sale yesterday and saw the exact one day high and one day low pattern you describe. Because I didn't recall having seen anything like it before, I assumed the guy must be doing something like buying batches of traffic, rather than having a steady stream of his own.

Be a shame if I turned down a good buy just because Alexa is even more flakey than I realized :)

same here. I think google gives a temporary boost to new sites, or new pages on sites, then lets it drop to a different position.

actually google is so unpredictable that I don't really concern myself with it very much, the majority of my se traffic ends up coming from yahoo and msn. but I'm not an seo person. I think it's higher quality traffic anyway, since those se's probably get used by the most naive and inexperienced users.

Yep, with the time less people has the toolbar installed, so it start to be less accurated.

That toolbar install too many shit to make it worthly.

did it ever come to your mind that sites above/below you might have flunctiating traffic which then changes ranks? lol

lol no shit ;))

Alexa is just another way to look at something imo

It's no good by itself, but I've found it somewhat useful.

the 1,245,656th thread online called "alexa stats are bullshit"

its almost like a rite of passage these days.

welcome to the interweb.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

It should be used as a general indicator, nothing more.

I find it useful for detecting bullshitters. Someone comes to me telling me his site's getting 100k uniques a day then I look up his Alexa rank and he's at 1,268,476 or something...

For what? Read the thread, silly :1orglaugh :error

You are kidding, correct?

A lot of people put way to high an emphasis on PR and Alexa.

If you had not noticed it this industry make money on SIGN UPS. Not the amount of traffic flowing through a site. Unless you sell traffic. :1orglaugh

alexa can be fucked

Alexa BS?

Say it aint so. lol

I use Alexa as a barometre (do you guys spell it barometer?) - it's just those with the toolbar that it counts... how many of us here use that friggin thing anyway?

Google needs to come up with a ranking based on users of its toolbar (or a version comparing rankings from multiple toolbars)... now that would be damn interesting.

I wouldnt even use it for that - all it takes is you and 3 of your friends to install the alexa toolbar and surf your site once a day to get into the top 100,000

PR from Google - Hahaha - if you use the toolbar then you definitely have some learning to do in SEO

the truth is out there!

yeppers, alexa only covers people with the alexa bar....

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

ignorant, but im not gonna discuss why :thumbsup

There's probably 10 people with the Alexa toolbar, who fucking cares about Alexa stats. The only stat I care about is my bank account stat.