| Alexa is an Amazon owned company that is famous | | | | that it is used by about 83% of them (onestat.com). |
| for its public traffic ranking service via its website. | | | | This is not a problem unless your audience is more |
| Website promotion guides often make a big deal | | | | likely to be in the other 17% of surfers, i.e., those that |
| about how to improve your Alexa ranking because a | | | | prefer to use Firefox, Safari, Opera or another |
| top position is often associated with high profits. As a | | | | alternative browser. For example, slashdot.org is a |
| new webmaster, you must understand a few very | | | | technology news site with an audience that is known |
| important points about Alexa's service. This article will | | | | to be very anti-Microsoft; Slashdot's motto is "News |
| explain what the data collected by Alexa mean and | | | | for nerds. Stuff that matters." One expects that most |
| then describe why you should care or not. | | | | of its users would use any browser other than IE and |
| There are three numbers that Alexa reports, reach, | | | | in fact it was recently posted that an estimated 65% |
| page views and overall rank. Reach refers to the | | | | of Slashdot's readers use a browser other than IE. As |
| percentage of all web users that visited your site. | | | | of this writing (July 12, 2006), Slashdot's ranking was |
| Alexa reports this number as "reach per million users." | | | | 176 with a reach of 5450 per million surfers. Slashdot is |
| For example if Alexa reports a reach of one, it means | | | | known for something called the "Slashdot effect" that |
| that on average out of one million web surfers one | | | | is when a story on the front page links to a site, it |
| visits your site. Page views simply measures the | | | | receives so many visitors that the servers often are |
| average number of pages a surfer examines when at | | | | not able to handle the sudden increase in traffic. In |
| your website. Those sites with a lot of content and | | | | other words, I would expect that Alexa's rank is |
| targeted visitors tend to generate a larger number of | | | | actually an underestimate of Slashdot's true rank. |
| page views. The overall Alexa rank is a combination | | | | From a statistics point of view, Alexa's rank cannot be |
| of the reach and page views numbers such that the | | | | thought of as an unbiased statistical measure. The |
| larger both of them are the lower the site's rank will be; | | | | sample of people used by Alexa for collecting data is |
| for Alexa, a smaller rank indicates a more important | | | | not a randomly selected set but rather it is biased |
| website. Alexa reports these numbers for each day, | | | | towards users of Microsoft Windows and Internet |
| one week and three month averages and the overall | | | | Explorer as well as those who are willing to install the |
| change over a three month period. So, how does | | | | toolbar and submit to Alexa information about their |
| Alexa gather these data? | | | | browsing behavior. If your audience is similar to |
| On a daily basis, Alexa collects statistics about the | | | | Slashdot's then don't expect accurate results. |
| number of visitors and page views for every website | | | | Anticipate the same if your audience includes people |
| on the Internet. Actually, it does not have data for all | | | | who are pro-privacy and would never install a toolbar |
| the sites. You see, data collection happens via web | | | | that calls home making their browsing behavior known |
| surfers that have downloaded and installed the Alexa | | | | to a large corporation. |
| toolbar for their Internet Explorer browser. When one | | | | So, if you really want accuracy in terms of your site's |
| of these users visits and explores a site, the toolbar | | | | number of users and page views then you are better |
| sends this information to Alexa's servers. What this | | | | off using analytics software, for example Google |
| means for webmasters is that only those sites visited | | | | Analytics, rather than Alexa. However, many |
| by users that have decided to install the toolbar will | | | | advertisers use Alexa's ranking as a neutral third party |
| actually have data collected for them. In addition, since | | | | estimate of a site's popularity; they consult Alexa in |
| only a rather small subset of all possible Web surfers | | | | order to determine how much advertising space is |
| actually uses the toolbar, the ranking is a statistical | | | | worth on your site. This is the reason why many |
| average that is not necessarily a true indication of the | | | | webmasters display their Alexa rank on the front |
| quality and number of a site's readers. In fact, the | | | | page. If you happen to be on the upper end of Alexa's |
| number is really inaccurate for sites with a small | | | | ranking then you should be able to benefit from it; if |
| number of visitors and Alexa admits that this is true for | | | | you are not then you probably shouldn't lose too much |
| those sites not in the top 100,000. | | | | sleep over it. Focus on adding fresh content to your |
| To make matters worse, the toolbar is only available | | | | site; this way you will be able to drive more traffic to |
| for Internet Explorer. Of course, IE is the browser used | | | | your site via the major search engines and also keep |
| by the majority of Internet users with data showing | | | | your visitors coming back. |