How Does AlexaRank Work And Should You Pay It Any Attention?

Written by Yaro

December 11, 2006 | 29 Comments | Print This Article

I have a confession to make. Ever since I installed the SearchStatus extension into my FireFox browser I have discovered a new addiction to go right along with my healthy love for PageRank - it’s close cousin, AlexaRank. In this case the bar is blue, and unlike PageRank the statistic AlexaRank represents has more to do with traffic and reach than search engine ranking authority or incoming links, but like PageRank is probably best interpreted as a “fun tool” rather than a definitive way to evaluate a website.

Alexa Rank Image

The image above is a snapshot taken from the bottom right of my browser. Those bars change for each site I visit. PageRank (green) changes on a per page basis while AlexaRank (blue) is fixed for the entire domain. As much as I try not too give much weighting to those two metrics, I find myself looking at the bars every time I visit a site to help me determine whether the site is worth watching, how well it ranks and how popular it is. If both bars are high I tend to care more - I want to assess why a particular site is doing well.

Before I continue, if you have no idea what PageRank is read this article - PageRank Explained - Keeping SEO Simple. If you have no idea what AlexaRank is, then read on…

What Is AlexaRank?

Alexa.com offers a search engine, a directory and a toolbar (among other services). It also has a resource called Alexa Traffic Rankings (click the traffic rankings tab at the top when you get to Alexa.com), which is what we are focusing on when we study AlexaRank. You can input any domain name into the traffic rankings form and Alexa will spit out the current ranking data for that site.

The AlexaRank blue bar is a snapshot representation of the full Alexa traffic rankings, which include graphs that track the history of practically every website online, or at least every site Alexa “touches” or is exposed to via it’s toolbar. Each site has ranking number, the lower the number the better, which is an aggregate of the last three months of traffic data.

Here is how Alexa describes their service -

What is Traffic Rank?

The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). The three-month change is determined by comparing the site’s current rank with its rank from three months ago. For example, on July 1, the three-month change would show the difference between the rank based on traffic during the first quarter of the year and the rank based on traffic during the second quarter.

Source: About the Alexa Traffic Rankings

You can see the traffic rank for my blog here - Entrepreneurs-Journey.com Traffic Rank.

I won’t go into detail about all the statistics Alexa provides - there are some pretty cool details available - what I want to focus on is how much attention we should give to the AlexaRank as an authority on traffic. If you want to see all the stats in action click the link above to review my blog stats and you will see the data is quite interesting, if not comprehensive (just the way I like it!).

The Alexa Toolbar

As mentioned in the description above, Alexa uses data provided by it’s toolbar users to generate the stats for each site. If you read the disclaimers on the Alexa traffic rankings help page, you will see that Alexa notes for popular sites (lower ranking number) the data is more accurate given the greater sample source, but for lower ranking sites of 100,000+ the accuracy can be dubious. Don’t get confused - remember the lower the AlexaRank number the higher the popularity of the site and the longer the blue bar will be.

Personally I have never used the Alexa Toolbar and I would doubt that the average toolbar user represents the average Web user. Hence I would not trust AlexaRank as an authority on traffic. However as a traffic trend watching tool, I think AlexaRank is valuable and certainly helpful for researching other sites, since the data is public.

AlexaRank Vs PageRank

One thing that I don’t like about Google’s PageRank is that often a site can enjoy a particularly high ranking, as high as a PageRank 6, and yet seem to have very little traffic. As I have postulated previously, I believe PageRank can often be raised to a high level thanks to a handful of links from very high PageRank sites. So for example if you own a PageRank 7 or 8 site, you can point a few links to your other sites and give them a PageRank 5 or 6. Hence PageRank doesn’t necessarily indicate traffic popularity, nor is it intended to, but if like me you want to evaluate a site (possibly to buy it), you really need to know the traffic numbers.

AlexaRank on the other hand is relevant when it comes to actual traffic numbers. While it won’t tell you anything about the quality of that traffic, or the source, you at least know there is traffic. If I come across a site with a high PageRank but I see a low AlexaRank I’m more inclined to think the site is “linking well” rather than generating traffic, although certainly both variables are interlinked. If both AlexaRank and PageRank are high then I’m more confident the site is popular and authoritative.

Of course all this is relative. What is considered “high traffic” by Alexa’s status may be nothing to you. Take BlogTrafficSchool.com for example. As I type this it has an AlexaRank of 43,837, a very respectable ranking. I know from my server stats that the actual traffic to the site is somewhere in the vicinity of 200-400 visitors per day - which isn’t amazing.

Is AlexaRank Important?

I’m glad to have the benefit of AlexaRank and I openly admit I pay it too much attention, just like PageRank. It’s a handy tool for evaluating a website and calculating a VERY rough estimation of it’s traffic. It should be consider a “trend” statistic as opposed to anything concrete and works well in that role because it aggregates data over a rolling three month period.

I encourage search engine optimizers and webmasters to install the SearchStatus extension into FireFox so you become actively aware of the AlexaRank of a site, but beware giving it too much weight in any important decision making.

Yaro Starak
Blog Search Engine Optimizer

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29 Comments

Awesome 1-year graph Yaro - it looks like a nice steady increase in traffic. I have to agree it’s a fun metric to monitor every now and then Here’s the alexa graph for our site Menuism.

Comment by Justin @ 2006-12-11 13:47:37

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I wrote a less detailed, yet similar article here:

http://www.redflymarketing.com/blog…

Just wanted to make a point that a relative high Alexa Rank is quite important in some cases.

Comment by Dave Davis @ 2006-12-11 17:22:59

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Sorry, I cannot edit that. If you want to trim it down….

Comment by Dave Davis @ 2006-12-11 17:23:37

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Yaro,

Another thing that you really need to note is that Alexa ranking is very easy to game. In fact, the fact that you use that extension (which I have also had installed for the past few months) is more likely to raise your ranking in Alexa. This is because you will spend a lot of time on your own websites (admin/posting screens etc) and each visit is recorded by Alexa. They track any hit to their service, whether through their own toolbar or through their services that return what the current rank is.

Comment by Blaine Moore @ 2006-12-12 01:07:20

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Dave - I edited it for you
Blaine - Yes quite right, and in fact that’s the topic of my next blog post - but not particularly about the extension.

Justin - yes, I’m enjoying watching my Alexa ranking even if it isn’t that important.

Comment by Yaro @ 2006-12-12 04:17:51

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Hi Yaro

Great blog, I too am a fellow Australian. Re: Alexa, I have had this installed for years, I believe it gives the repeated visits to the same sites (your own) to much weight.

I have noticed in the early days that my old business (I sold recently) went from 2mill down to 90,000 or so in under a year again with 3-400 uniques a day. When I left it has gone up to 1.5m again, but Alexa is important, I think its as good as a DMOZ link, so its worth filling out their form.
Thanks Mike

Comment by Mike @ 2006-12-12 06:50:19

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Seems the best way is to go with both AlexaRank and Google’s page rank…if there is yet another third service, it’d be perfect…. compare the three and get the average rank
Mystery

http://mystic-pandemonium.blogspot.com/

Comment by Mystery @ 2006-12-12 09:04:18

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I had the alexa installed for a while but started to get virus warning so took it off,seems as though they have improved lately so will have to get it installed again, great blog you have here.

Comment by James @ 2006-12-12 10:00:44

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Hi Yaro,
Alexa’s good as a rough gauge of traffic to your site and some advertisers use it as one of the analystics tools in their evaluation of publisher sites.

i guess the advertisers make the market (just as they determine certain domain names are valued in the millions…)

i dont think alexa’s that easy to spam or abuse.
check out Jason from yfs1.com’s post: http://www.yfs1.com/2006/manipulating-alexa-isnt-what-it-used-to-be.html

they’ve also done an upgrade in recent months.
i blogged abt it here:
http://www.whoisandrewwee.com/172/alexa-upgrade/

Comment by andrew wee @ 2006-12-12 19:32:45

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I wouldn’t worry about alexa or pr IMHO.

Comment by Cold Calling @ 2006-12-13 04:31:12

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Yaro,
Great tool, gave me a bit of trouble at first, but do all of my Firefox installations, I must be cursed.
Alexa rank has always been more telling of the real traffic we receive on PlateWire.
Thanks for the tip!

Comment by Mark Buckman @ 2006-12-13 05:07:34

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[…] In my previous post I introduced and discussed the importance of the website traffic monitor AlexaRank. Whether you value your Alexa traffic ranking or not there are definite advantages to having a high AlexRank. Many webmasters and business folk look at the AlexaRank as a reasonable representation of a site’s traffic. If you are selling advertising from your site the more “proof” you can demonstrate of your traffic - and in AlexaRank’s case it is an independent valuation of your traffic, which adds credibility - the more likely advertisers will come knocking at your door willing to give you some of their ad budget. […]

Pingback by How To Boost Your Alexa Ranking In One Easy Step » Internet Business Blog | Entrepreneurs-Journey.com - by Yaro Starak @ 2006-12-13 05:21:58

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The other thing to keep in mind about Alexa rankings is the they are heavily skewed towards sites that are of intest to Internet savvy - since, like others mentioned it only counts visits from people using the toolbar, which is more likely to be us stats addicted Internet workers.
So it is really only a valid comparison between two sites in “like” categories. A site about dogs, for example would have to have 100 times as much traffic as Yaro’s BlogTrafficSchool to get a number in the 40k range, since there are 100 times more of Yaro’s visitors using the Alexa toolbar (or now the Search Status plugin).

Comment by Jon @ 2006-12-13 05:41:16

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Alexa is reported to be very inaccurate. Many people advise not to rely much on it. I still take a look on alexa ranking when reviewing a site, I have read some ebook that alexa ranking above 20 000 may be 250 unique visitors a day, but I believe this info is highly inaccurate and can vary from website to website..

Comment by Ralph Nunes @ 2006-12-14 00:07:19

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AlexaRank - Â¿Es un Medidor de TrÃ¡fico Fiable?…

Yaro de Entrepreneur’s journey posteÃ³ una interesante visiÃ³n sobre el Alexa Rank, un indicador de trÃ¡fico provisto por Alexa que yo vengo observando desde hace un tiempo pero todavÃa no puedo sacar buenas conclusiones.
BÃ¡sicamente, Alexa rec……

Trackback by ProWeblogs @ 2006-12-14 01:03:54

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[…] Zoals je kunt zien wordt de waarde niet alleen bepaalt door de PR en de Alexa ranking. Maar zoals Yaro Starak van Entrepreneur’s Journey schrijft Alexa is niet alleen belangrijk voor adverteerders. Stel je wilt kijken of een site waardevol voor jou is. Dan zegt de PageRank van Google alleen niet genoeg. Waardevol voor jou? Bijvoorbeeld wanneer je er over denkt om een site te kopen, of je wilt een link uitwisselen met een bepaalde site…. Als je zelf een website hebt met een PR van 7 of 8 en je linkt met andere sites naar deze hoge PR site dan stijgt de PR waarde van deze andere sites aanzienlijk terwijl er misschien nauwelijks verkeer is. De PageRank (PR) wordt sterk bepaald door links van andere sites. Als je een link hebt met een aantal sites met een hoge PR dan stijgt de PR van jouw site, ook al heb je een laag aantal bezoekers. […]