Alexa Sucks and I Think You Will Agree

Jason Katzenback — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:15:06 +0000

Yes I realize that you have probably heard this before but I need to get this off my chest. In fact there was a great post (which goes into way more detail then I do here) about this issue over at Daily Blog Tips (which is a great blog) a post called Alexa is Becoming Completely Worthless

First of all I want you to look at this…

What this graph represents is the Alexa demise of..

Now, the question comes up.. IS THIS TRUE???

Sorry but it is not and in fact it is complete garbage and is misleading people like crazy.

Now I realize that there is no perfect system out there.. and perhaps the only thing close to that is using an analytics system like Google Analytics.. however, even that is not perfect and is not publicaly viewable.

The problem with making Google Analytics publicly viewable is it gives away a lot of data that is gold for competitors.

Google Trends is good but it is updated far too irregularly. Speaking of trends…

They show the opposite of Alexa and a pretty steady picture for most… and if you look at the bottom you can see good ole johncow is actually growing a lot.

So could that be right.. could Alexa be completely screwed up???

Well lets look at another on.. Compete.com

Well I’ll be… it shows a significant growth in traffic % for all sites still?

OK, so the reason I did this is because the traffic subscribers and income of Johncow is growing great but yet Alexa is telling a different story, which is extremely frustrating. So I decided that I would contact Alexa and explain the situation for clarification. I also wanted to give them a clear example of how I think it is extremely screwed up because another site that I own has seen way less traffic and yet Alexa is growing???

A –> In June of 2008 Articlefeeder.com was averaging 950 unique visitors a day and Johncow was averaging 2234.37
B –> The end of August 2008 ArticleFeeder was averaging 1102 unique visitors a day and Johncow was averaging 2922.68 unique visitors a day.

That is a 25% increase in traffic in just a couple months… which is not bad.

Yet according to Alexa, Articlefeeder is getting way more traffic?

The main frustration I have with all this is that so many people tie Alexa into a sites authority and many advertisers use Alexa as a starting point.

The response I got from Alexa was a perfectly stated “political sounding” answer. In a nut shell it politely said that “we are right and I do not care what you say”.

So… all in all I have to say.. THAT SUCKS

So whats the point of this here message?

1. Alexa rating suck more then ever.

2. Do not believe everything you read… obviously this is an example of proven results versus third party estimations. Go with what you have proven to work for yourself and not what others are guessing works.

So what is Alexa been saying about you as of late?

John Cow dot Com » alexa

Alexa Sucks and I Think You Will Agree