Alexa is Pure, Unadulterated Crap

How can I make such a bold statement? It's simple. It's the truth.

I don't pay attention to the Alexa rankings anymore, but I was curious and looked at the ranking for my other blog, which is less than a month old. What I discovered was shocking and amusing at the same time.

It seems that blog had a ranking of 64,602 yesterday. How could that be? It takes some time to get that kind of ranking on any blog, right? Well, I guess not, but I think I accidentally gamed Alexa yesterday and succeeded in getting that number without trying.

You see, I went through all 40+ posts on that blog yesterday to make sure all the videos were still active on YouTube. I found quite a few that weren't and replaced them. I intend to do that at least once per month, at the end of each month.

So… yesterday's statistics for the other blog shows a reach of 0.00045%, a rank of 64,602 and 64.7 unique page views. There's no way those stats are right. I only had 47 unique visitors and one of those was me!

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October 1st, 2007 By RT Cunningham | Untwisted Vortex | Philippines | Categories: Marketing | Tags: Alexa, noads, statistics | Full Article Feed | Summary Article Feed | Comments Feed | Full Articles by Email | Respond | Trackback URL

2. Matt on 2007-10-01 at 9:46 pm (Reply)

   Yeah, Alexa is crap and it pisses me off that places like TLA use it to rank publishers.

   2. RT Cunningham | Untwisted Vortex | Philippines on 2007-10-01 at 9:51 pm (Reply)

      My sentiments exactly, though I probably would've worded it a little differently.

3. Abhinav Sood on 2007-10-02 at 3:39 am (Reply)

   Even feedburner is the same kind as Alexa ! yesterday the feedburner count on techXtreme showed only 12 readers! and today its again back at 28 ! I dun understand!

4. hari on 2007-10-02 at 3:13 pm (Reply)

   I never use these dubious stats derived such websites. Google is fairly steady in rating websites and it's proven to be the most reliable as well.

5. John Hunter on 2007-10-09 at 10:17 am (Reply)

   Well I agree Alexa is lame as a measurement tool but it actual does tell you something. The ranks (not daily ranks but actual long term ranks) in the top 1,000 are highly correlated with very popular sites. Given that I can't say it is meaningless. It is, as anyone that looks at it (and as Alexa states) very questionable below 100,000 since just a couple of users can make a difference.

   I would say it is like many ways of comparison possibly useful but you have to be careful. Is someone who played division 1 college basketball (in the USA) likely to be better than someone who didn't? Yes. Is that always true - no. Is someone who started on a final four college basketball team likely better than someone that never played college basketball? Yes. Is someone that lead the ACC in scoring and rebounding and named the defenseive player of the year likely better? Yes, and much more likely than the first 2 questions.

   Does an Alexa rank of 1,000 tell you something - I think so. Does an Alexa rank of 1,500,000 tell you something - probably. But it is only one farily small factor.

   The thing is, if you know the limitations of a measure you can use it to add to your overall knowledge even when that measure is quite flawed.

   The graphic design of a site is something people use to judge the site. Does judging a "book by the cover" (which is what this actually is) tell you anything. I would say that it is fair to judge a website partially by the graphic design. It doesn't tell you everything, but it is one more piece of information that can factor in. Some people find one spelling mistake and think that means a site is unprofessional. I can't spell at all and most likely won't notice spelling errors, and even if I do I don't care much. But again that is one factor that added to a bunch of others can add to an assessment with justification I believe.

   I think that the Alexa rank is significantly at odds with real rankings. People seem to be making the assumption that means it is worthless. Which might be true, if there was an easy alternative that gave much better data. But until then, you can still make use of a flawed data set by understanding the limitations (like it is only useful over long periods of time and over huge differences in rank). For example: 80,000 compared to 200,000 is not statistically significant in my estimation. 1,000 compared to 80,000 is. Also looking at Compete rankings (which isn't much, or any, better than Alexa) can give some added confirmation to the Alexa ranking (or give less).

   2. RT Cunningham | Untwisted Vortex | Philippines on 2007-10-10 at 2:10 am (Reply)

      Well then. That was an extremely long rebuttal. I think Alexa's crap and you don't. I think, however, more people will agree with my point of view.

      It'll be a moot point in November when thousands of bloggers will no longer have to rely on their Alexa ranks.

6. Squeaky on 2007-10-16 at 9:55 pm (Reply)

   I have to agree that Alexa stats are crap. They are easy to manipulate, just by paging through your own web site, simple java scripts and Alexa cheating software can be setup to browse through your web site to fake your traffic.
   Alexa service is not dependable and a majority of the time is not even functional. Seems to have more value to people who buy into the whole Google's PageRank status, where they sell products and services which PR and Alexa determines their livelihood.

   I vote, thumbs down for Alexa…….