Here's Why I Don't Trust Alexa Rankings
A spirited debate has been gong on recently around hits, visits and unique visitors. In the comment stream of Real Estate Blog Traffic, How Many Hits Should I Expect, Brad Carroll made the following comment.
"Does one blog get more traffic than another? Simply go to alexa.com and find out. Granted, it's not perfect and there are ways to "work the system" but it gives a great overview.
Brad certainly acknowledges it is not perfect and we both commented back and forth about this, but I felt an illustration of why I don't trust their numbers was in order. Especially since I think Brad is one of the smartest SEO guys I've ever read. So, this is not a knock on Brad in any way, shape or form. I know he's going to enjoy this comparison.
In my comments, I suggested we use a few real numbers and comparisons to test it out. So, I went to the real estate segment of topblogsites at Blogflux and pulled three sites from their rankings. I used TopBlogSites because in order to be on their rankings, you must insert code that sends messages to their data collection servers. This is a very accurate way to measure one site against another. There is no guess work.
The Three Blogs I Chose To Compare
I chose the number 1 ranked site, HousingPanic, the number 12 ranked site, BloodHoundBlog, and the number 43 ranked site, RSS Pieces. The one measure of true traffic, for me, is unique visitors. This is a measure of traffic that weeds out multiple visits by the same "person" using IP addresses. While visits is certainly important, unique visitors will more accurately measure the true reach of your blog. I could get 50 visits from my mom in one day, so I discount visits.
A Direct Comparison Of Unique Visitors For This Month / All Time
- Housing Panic - 65,931 / 968,694
- BloodhoundBlog - 8,985 / 176,033
- RSS Pieces - 2,216 / 48,073
As you can see, there is a large difference between the three blogs actual unique visitor counts. I have compared TopBlogSite's numbers with our own number at the Real Estate Shows Blog and they are right on target. So I have some degree of confidence in this comparison.
So, if Alexa is a good way to judge a blogs traffic, you would expect that the Alexa rankings would reflect the numbers above. But they do not. I wish I could embed the live graph of the Alexa traffic rank comparison, but AR doesn't allow Java embeds, so I have to embed this screen capture.
As you can see, for much of the last three months, RSS Pieces ranked much higher than BloodhoundBlog. HousingPanic doesn't even show up on the radar. HousingPanic has had more than 20 times the visits of RSS Pieces and more than 5.5 times the traffic of BloodhoundBlog, and it doesn't even show up in the Alexa comparison. Their traffic rank right now is 154,799. BloodhoundBlog's is 71,704 and RSS Pieces' is 41,890.
Alexa's Ranking Of These Three Blogs Is Completely The Opposite Of Their Unique Visitor Rankings.
This is why I don't trust Alexa's rankings.
UPDATE:
TechCrunch also wrote about Alexa today. They were even more harsh: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/13/alexa-says-youtube-is-now-bigger-than-google-theyre-wrong/
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I can be ranked number 5 million in alexa but what is that to me if i make more than the person ranking number 50,000? I just dont get why people love alexa so much ;-)