Comments on: Please Stop Quoting Alexa Data

By: Stacking Up: Your Competition Online | Hostway Web Resources

Stacking Up: Your Competition Online | Hostway Web Resources — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:48:40 +0000

[...] you know who you’re competing against, start with Alexa to get basic information on their Web site traffic compared to your traffic. Alexa compiles this [...]

By: improex

improex — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:17:41 +0000

At least a tool to see your place in the web..

By: Alexa data: how accurate is it - using audited ABCe figures to check? » malcolm coles

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 07:41:04 +0000

[...] Please stop quoting Alexa data (although see the last comment where the author says things have improved). [...]

By: Alexa ranking – what’s it all about? « Dhagelan MMB

Alexa ranking – what’s it all about? « Dhagelan MMB — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:59:49 +0000

[...] Dustin at WebConnoisseur states that Alexa data is tremendously flawed. [...]

By: dustin

dustin — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:10:04 +0000

Sudip,
Alexa has gotten better, but so has their competition. Seems like the best sources in terms of quality and reliability of data, going from the Highest to lowest:
1) Your own analytics data (doesn’t work for competitors)
2) Comscore or Nielsen (very expensive and not very granular)
3) Hitwise or Compete (somewhat expensive, but much more granular) and Quancast (mostly free and quantified sites should be accurate)
5) Google (limited information, but free)
6) Alexa
7) Other sources

This list is different

By: Sudip Chakraborty

Sudip Chakraborty — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:44:26 +0000

Interesting topic! I was about to use Alexa data when I saw this and stopped. However, if we should not use Alexa, what is an alternative to get some estimate of traffic?

Thanks in advance,
Sudip

By: The Unsecret Formula For Website Success | Turn On Your Marketing

The Unsecret Formula For Website Success | Turn On Your Marketing — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 01:27:40 +0000

[...] Alexa is flawed. So please stop quoting it. More importantly, stop focusing on website traffic. It’s not a [...]

By: kevin

kevin — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 15:43:32 +0000

Well, it’s well known the alexa is biased to Webmasters, because they are more likely to install Alexa toolbar. That’s why SEOMoz got much higher rating, it got more attention from Webmasters. That said, it still provide a good comparison between similar web site. Beside, is there a better way to rank web sites?

By: jaspert

jaspert — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:41:51 +0000

The internet competition is much smoother for someone who does something apart from reading data ….

By: Tuke

Tuke — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:37:21 +0000

Just like I mentioned earlier today about alaxa’s numbers on mattcutts.com site. Do not try to look at the numbers as is, they are meaningless. You can do trending and comparison of like sites of which both are in the top 100K sites, anything else like in your example of comparing seomoz and allrecipes in alexa is like trying to compare a freeway to a country they are different animals and thus can not be compared on alexa data, however you could draw some conclusions between two seo sites or recipe sites. But you can never mix those two because the population using alexa toolbar is skewed comparisons between sites with different subjects are meaningless.