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Given the number of people who seem to use Alexa 'rankings' as the basis of an Afd decision on website articles, I thought you guys might be interested in this article:
http://www.johnchow.com/index.php/why-alexa-is-worthless/
It has been clear for a long time that Alexa 'rankings' are utter crap, as they are based not on website visitors and links (as Google or Yahoo rankings are) but on the activities of those infected with Alexa's spyware-esque toolbar.
Cynical
G'day David,
Given the number of people who seem to use Alexa 'rankings' as the basis of an Afd decision on website articles, I thought you guys might be interested in this article:
http://www.johnchow.com/index.php/why-alexa-is-worthless/
It has been clear for a long time that Alexa 'rankings' are utter crap, as they are based not on website visitors and links (as Google or Yahoo rankings are) but on the activities of those infected with Alexa's spyware-esque toolbar.
Pray allow me to be the first to drop the facade of maturity and cry out: "Well, DUH!"
Alexa is now, always has been, and almost certainly will be in the future, utterly useless ... their rankings *and* their stupid little toolbar. Anyone silly enough to take the rankings at face value needs to be whacked with a Cluebat.
Well, obviously it shouldn't be used as the sole way of making a decision, but if it has a high Alexa rank, it means a lot of people who use that Alexa toolbar visit the site. That should give some indication. Also, if none of them visit a certain site that says something as well.
Google is often useless as well, because of it's sensitivity to being googlebombed and abused in other ways.
One shouldn't use any single indicator alone to make a decision.
Mgm
On 10/1/06, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
G'day David,
Given the number of people who seem to use Alexa 'rankings' as the basis of an Afd decision on website articles, I thought you guys might be interested in this article:
http://www.johnchow.com/index.php/why-alexa-is-worthless/
It has been clear for a long time that Alexa 'rankings' are utter crap, as they are based not on website visitors and links (as Google or Yahoo rankings are) but on the activities of those infected with Alexa's spyware-esque toolbar.
Pray allow me to be the first to drop the facade of maturity and cry out: "Well, DUH!"
Alexa is now, always has been, and almost certainly will be in the future, utterly useless ... their rankings *and* their stupid little toolbar. Anyone silly enough to take the rankings at face value needs to be whacked with a Cluebat.
-- Mark Gallagher "I've got to start listening to those quiet, nagging doubts." -- Calvin & Hobbes
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On 1 Oct 2006, at 08:50, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
Well, obviously it shouldn't be used as the sole way of making a decision, but if it has a high Alexa rank, it means a lot of people who use that Alexa toolbar visit the site. That should give some indication. Also, if none of them visit a certain site that says something as well.
In my cases it indicates that the UK Broadcasters don't allow installation of the Alexa toolbar, and that Alexa doesn't count iframe hits. As with all these things, there will always be cases where the raw figures are misleading.
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
Well, obviously it shouldn't be used as the sole way of making a decision, but if it has a high Alexa rank, it means a lot of people who use that Alexa toolbar visit the site. That should give some indication. Also, if none of them visit a certain site that says something as well.
Google is often useless as well, because of it's sensitivity to being googlebombed and abused in other ways.
One shouldn't use any single indicator alone to make a decision.
Mgm
On 10/1/06, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
G'day David,
Given the number of people who seem to use Alexa 'rankings' as the basis of an Afd decision on website articles, I thought you guys might be interested in this article:
http://www.johnchow.com/index.php/why-alexa-is-worthless/
It has been clear for a long time that Alexa 'rankings' are utter crap, as they are based not on website visitors and links (as Google or Yahoo rankings are) but on the activities of those infected with Alexa's spyware-esque toolbar.
Pray allow me to be the first to drop the facade of maturity and cry out: "Well, DUH!"
Alexa is now, always has been, and almost certainly will be in the future, utterly useless ... their rankings *and* their stupid little toolbar. Anyone silly enough to take the rankings at face value needs to be whacked with a Cluebat.
-- Mark Gallagher "I've got to start listening to those quiet, nagging doubts." -- Calvin & Hobbes
Unlike Alexa, the thing with Google is that you can skim through some of the results and see if a lot of them are the result of spamming or googlebombing. If so, you can often refine your search to exclude such pages. I use Google a lot in getting an idea of how notable the subject of a new article is, because I can see what kinds of sites mention it.
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Minh Nguyen wrote:
Unlike Alexa, the thing with Google is that you can skim through some of the results and see if a lot of them are the result of spamming or googlebombing. If so, you can often refine your search to exclude such pages. I use Google a lot in getting an idea of how notable the subject of a new article is, because I can see what kinds of sites mention it.
The other difference being that, although Alexa and Google are probably each as vulnerable to being gamed, Google has a substantially larger number of users and a substantially better database (speaking personally, Googlebot is my website's top robot visitor whereas A9/Alexa doesn't even register).
Cynical