I looked up my site in alexa, and it seems like the statistics aren't really accurate. I got 25 more users online a few days ago when a video came out, and they said that my traffic dropped that day. It seems like it just really isn't that accurate. They also state my bounce rate at 10% when it is really about 25%
It isn't really accurate as it only goes by users using the alexa toolbar i think. You can have 6 users visiting with 4 using the toolbar and then another day having 100 users visiting with 1 using the toolbar. It will show day 1 with the 6 users as the the highest traffic day out of the 2.
I figured that. My Alexa rank has been going down the tubes since I switched to Opera (I don't have the toolbar for Opera), so I figured that was how they got the rank.
And my other domain has jumped to 4,000,000 just from visiting it a few times ~eeeek~
Yeah Fowler is right, trust your PR and hit rate, you might get 1000 visits a day, spending an hour on your site, bounce rate is low etc. and still only have a 500,000 Alexa rank due to only 1/3 using that toolbar. I tend to steer clear of it as it links sites to sites based on usage of the toolbar, which I don't like.
It certainly isn't accurate day to day. For example yesterday awesome styles only got 400 unique hits - but the alexa rank was around 63,000 http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2 ... les.com%2F - yet when the site gets 1,000+ unique hits in a day the rank is 100,000 maybe even 200,000+
However that being said Alexa is pretty accurate when to show trends. You couldn't use alexa to say that a site with a rank of 150,000 has more traffic than a site which has a rank of 160,000 - the gap is too small and could easily be down to one site having more toolbar users. You could however say that a site with a rank of 100,000 has more traffic than a site with a rank of 4,000,000. Which such a big gap it's unlikely to be a 'fluke'.
Of course the logic is that the more traffic you get the more percentage will be using the alexa toolbar/widgets and so your rank should increase with traffic.
That was very informative. I agree with what you say, the band's website jumped to the top 50,000 the day after the new album was realased, so it can show how popular a site is in contrast to other sites.
+rep
As Fowler said, I see it as more of a bragging rights tool. Opera doesn't like toolbars, so I can't really have any affect on it at all. Mine's always been low though, I rather put effort into SEO than that ~wink~
Indeed, Alexa only ranks it based on users of the toolbar. My traffic has been going up over the past few days, but Alexa ranking going down. As stated by spyka, it's due to more traffic from users not using the toolbar.
I don't use the toolbar myself...I've never liked toolbars that don't offer some kind of real benefit...e.g, SeoQuake's toolbar is quite useful as it allows me to see the various stats of a site without manually checking.
