View Full Version : What is the scope of a web-site?
Conficio
10-31-2003, 06:12 PM
Dear fellow webmasters,
I read quite a bit about Alexa and it's traffic measurements via a "tool-bar" (in fact a viewer spy - or viewer meassurment tool).
Alexa and some other search engines claim they use the traffic information to rank (google based) search results.
But I see a major flaw in the way Alexa (and Google) do see the scope of a web-site. It seems all that counts is the base domain xyz.com or xyz.net. This way they assign the traffic profile of xyz.com for a site that is hosted on abc.xyz.com. For example weltladen-lienz.home.comcast.net is ranked as comcast.net (traffic rank 44). Which is certainly a bit too high for the small site. It also applies the wrong reviews and the wrong contact info.
What do you think? Any comments?
K<o>[/code]
TheWebDoctor(tm)
11-01-2003, 09:37 AM
Alexa's reports have never been correct. In fact, they report my corporate site way below the actual truth.
You are right in how they report. A subdomain to them is part of the originating domain. Therefore, a business web site residing at an host inside a subdomain will always count toward the main domain. Technically, that is correct because the subdomain is a part of the original domain.
If you are running a business and using your ISP, a free service like Geocities, or a subdomain of another domain, you are running the gambit. You need a "real" hosting solution that allows your domain name to be in the returned URL. That is what brands your business.
In the meantime, you are branding your ISP's business. That's a waste of time and energy.
simonm
11-03-2003, 12:01 PM
All Alex seems to do is report stats gathered by instances of its toolbars. Therefore the stats you see on Alexa represent what Alexa toolbar users look at. Most likely this will exclude the vast majority of business users as company PC's will (should) be limited in terms of what the user can install onto them - ie not the Alexa toolbar!
rlrouse
11-03-2003, 12:53 PM
A higher percentage of webmasters have the Alexa Toolbar installed than internet users in general. This means that a site that is visited primarily by webmasters (such as WebProWorld or other webmaster resource sites) will have a more accurate Alexa ranking then general purpose sites.
Tht being said, your Alexa ranking will never be completely accurate for a couple of reasons:
1 - Internet Explorer currently the only browser that supports the toolbar (that I know about anyway), so visitors using a different browser won't be counted by default.
2 - Not all IE users have the Alexa Toolbar installed.
In general, a site's traffic will actually be higher than that shown in the Alexa ranking for the reasons stated above.
elearning
11-03-2003, 01:29 PM
Hi,
You are 100% correct - however many companies out there look at the Alexa Toolbar as an "accurate" measurement of a sites popularity.
I disagree with this.
Over the last few months, one of my other sites has dropped off quite a bit on Alexa - however the number of visitors per day and month has increased drastically - yet Alexa data stays the same. Yes, I understand that Alexa updates every quarter so I'll see if my Alexa #'s go up, stay the same or go down at the next update.
Alexa also "just recently" updated my links as well. For the longest time it showed 0 inbound links.
Mohammed
A higher percentage of webmasters have the Alexa Toolbar installed than internet users in general. This means that a site that is visited primarily by webmasters (such as WebProWorld or other webmaster resource sites) will have a more accurate Alexa ranking then general purpose sites.
Tht being said, your Alexa ranking will never be completely accurate for a couple of reasons:
1 - Internet Explorer currently the only browser that supports the toolbar (that I know about anyway), so visitors using a different browser won't be counted by default.
2 - Not all IE users have the Alexa Toolbar installed.
In general, a site's traffic will actually be higher than that shown in the Alexa ranking for the reasons stated above.
Steven Glover
11-03-2003, 04:09 PM
From the horsie's mouth:
Some Important Disclaimers
The traffic data are based on the set of Alexa users, which may not be a representative sample of the global Internet population. Known biases include (but are likely not limited to) the following:
Our users are disproportionately likely to visit alexa.com, amazon.com and archive.org, and traffic to these sites may be substantially overcounted.
The Alexa Toolbar works only with the Internet Explorer browser. Sites frequented mainly by users of other browsers will be undercounted. For example, the AOL/Netscape browser is not supported, which means that Alexa collects little data from AOL users, and our traffic to aol.com is likely lower than it would be for a more representative sample.
The Alexa Toolbar works only on Windows operating systems. Although a large majority of the Internet population currently use Windows, traffic to any sites which are disproportionately visited by users of other operating systems will be undercounted.
The rate of adoption of Alexa software in different parts of the world may vary widely due to advertising locality, language, and other geographic and cultural factors. For example, to some extent the prominence of Korean sites among our top-ranked sites reflects known high rates of general Internet usage in South Korea, but there may also be a dispropotionate number of Korean Alexa users.
In some cases traffic data may also be adversely affected by our "site" definitions. With tens of millions of hosts on the Internet, our automated procedures for determining which hosts are serving the "same" content may be incorrect and/or out-of-date. Similarly, the determinations of domains and home pages may not always be accurate. When these determinations change (as they do periodically), there may be sudden artificial changes in the Alexa traffic rankings for some sites as a consequence.
The Alexa Toolbar turns itself off on secure pages (https:). Sites with more secure page views will be under-represented in the Alexa traffic data.
We recently did a test on the Alexa toolbar. We are constantly accessing our pages to make changes as we have a web based admin system. We uninstalled every instance of Alexa on all of the machines and our rank has started to head back up.
Steven Glover
11-03-2003, 04:12 PM
From the horsie's mouth:
Some Important Disclaimers
The traffic data are based on the set of Alexa users, which may not be a representative sample of the global Internet population. Known biases include (but are likely not limited to) the following:
Our users are disproportionately likely to visit alexa.com, amazon.com and archive.org, and traffic to these sites may be substantially overcounted.
The Alexa Toolbar works only with the Internet Explorer browser. Sites frequented mainly by users of other browsers will be undercounted. For example, the AOL/Netscape browser is not supported, which means that Alexa collects little data from AOL users, and our traffic to aol.com is likely lower than it would be for a more representative sample.
The Alexa Toolbar works only on Windows operating systems. Although a large majority of the Internet population currently use Windows, traffic to any sites which are disproportionately visited by users of other operating systems will be undercounted.
The rate of adoption of Alexa software in different parts of the world may vary widely due to advertising locality, language, and other geographic and cultural factors. For example, to some extent the prominence of Korean sites among our top-ranked sites reflects known high rates of general Internet usage in South Korea, but there may also be a dispropotionate number of Korean Alexa users.
In some cases traffic data may also be adversely affected by our "site" definitions. With tens of millions of hosts on the Internet, our automated procedures for determining which hosts are serving the "same" content may be incorrect and/or out-of-date. Similarly, the determinations of domains and home pages may not always be accurate. When these determinations change (as they do periodically), there may be sudden artificial changes in the Alexa traffic rankings for some sites as a consequence.
The Alexa Toolbar turns itself off on secure pages (https:). Sites with more secure page views will be under-represented in the Alexa traffic data.
We recently did a test on the Alexa toolbar. We are constantly accessing our pages to make changes as we have a web based admin system. We uninstalled every instance of Alexa on all of the machines and our rank has started to head back up.
tsindos
11-03-2003, 04:12 PM
I don't want to disagree with most posts here but I have the feeling that Alexa toolbar is accurate. Look at www.geocities.com It is ranked 481 last time I looked with Alexa. But if you see another site that I created on geocities (http://www.geocities.com/tsindos/) it is ranked 2,975,965. Therefore, i cannot agree that the ranking is dependant on the actual domain name.
I wish it was...
kneelsit
11-03-2003, 04:33 PM
IMHO , I see Toolbars, Alexa's or Google's, as no more than an ego-stroking adjunct. Highly inaccurate by way of providing any really worthwhile info. Installed only by those techie types who are prepared to have their machines loaded with extra clutter. Nobody has any accurate figure or even guesstimate of what tiny percentage of web-users out of the millions on the net have bothered to install either of these - so what is their real value?
Stick to a weekly check of your logs and a quick look at where you stand in relation to your opposition by using a discreet free tracker on your home page only. e.g. extreme-dm or sitemeter.
Anita Campbell
11-03-2003, 04:42 PM
The Alexa toolbar has a very useful feature: you can use it to quickly find similar sites, i.e., competitors of the site up on the browser. My business frequently has me preparing strategic marketing plans for clients, part of which involves creating competitive landscapes. Alexa is a quick way to identify some of a site's competitors. Not foolproof or exhaustive, but fast and a good starting point. And it offers a quick and dirty comparison (again not foolproof or exhaustive) of the relative Web popularity of those competitors. Provided you accept it for what it is, and realize its limitations, Alexa does have its uses.
If you recognize what Alexa (a subsidery of Amazon.com) is meant to do for webmasters, viewers, amazon.com affliates, and especially amazon.com, then it is a useful tool for driving more traffic to your site and generating sales commisions, if you offer the branded Alexa tool bar on your web site, as an amazon.com affliate. 90% of my viewers use Internet Explorer, so the IE only limitation is of little concern to me. Most of the viewers that have downloaded my branded Alexa toolbar are not webmasters. Overall, it has helped my traffic numbers not only on Alexa but on all the major search engines.
Who do you trust for your ranking stats.
For instance both these url
www.boatstogo.co.uk & www.allboats.co.uk have a difference of 300,000 from Alexa results, as against results from http://www.trafficranking.com/
a free ranking site.
So where do we stand for accurate results?
all the best to all
Janet
I will attempt to answer BTG's question. All of the traffic ranking services have to have a source of information regarding the statistics of web sites. Alexa uses mainly their tool bar and other commercial sources. trafficranking.com buys their information from free providers of web site statistics. Most web hosting services provide their clients with daily, monthly. and yearly statistics for visits and page views, which is a better measuring tool for popularity than the sites you referenced.
I agree. I would not trust Alexa. It bases it ranking on visits from users who have Alexa installed.
However I do not understand Ranking.com either. It shows my site www.logodesignworks.com as not having any links at all. While I have more than 200 links on my google search etc.
Anyways like some one suggested it is always best to depend on your logs and track your visitor count.
What good is it to have 150 visitors a day and about 2 sales a month?
minstrel
11-04-2003, 10:06 AM
See excerpt from article posted here:
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=7928
ronniethedodger
11-04-2003, 01:37 PM
IMHO , I see Toolbars, Alexa's or Google's, as no more than an ego-stroking adjunct. Highly inaccurate by way of providing any really worthwhile info..
On the contrary. As tools go (and this is just another tool) this one does have some good points. Whether or not it is displaying results from a narrow group of users is not the issue, they are still results worth looking at to get another piece of information that can be useful.
I use it to compare traffic rankings with my competitors. If the results that Alexa is reflecting are from the same sampling group (regardless of what that group is) then I have good comparison data to gauge how well we are doing. We enjoy a very nice ranking in the high 70's right now, and if any of our competitors peak their heads up above the tracked top 100,000....I for one would like to know about it.
I discount the theory that the people who use this tool are mostly web designers or webmasters as rlrouse stated. I lean more to there being quite a few of them being Amazon Customers as is pointed out in Alexa's Disclaimer. In that case, then the results are even more valuable because they reflect the buying minded public...ready made Internet buyers. In that respect, the data is even more valuable to me.
Stick to a weekly check of your logs and a quick look at where you stand in relation to your opposition by using a discreet free tracker on your home page only. e.g. extreme-dm or sitemeter
I couldn't pass this up! Extreme tracker and other free Counters for the most part expose their data not only to the site's that use them, but also to myself and anyone else who has a mind to go looking for it. This is another "tool" that I use to combine with Alexa's Traffic Ranking, but I am just borrowing their tracking tool every now and then. It also displays a lot to the keywords and phrases that they are getting hits on. Extreme exposes this data quite well and I am a sneaky guy by nature, and ...well this is getting off topic.
We too are offering the Free toolbar. I am not one to use an abundance of Amazon ads on a site because they look tacky...and they are everywhere. But the toolbar with the site branding is a very good aspect. It is subtle (translation: sneakier) to the users of it. I also feel it is not really a half-bad toolbar when you come right down to it. The pop-up blocker and related sites information that is displayed alone make it quite a nice toolbar to have.
Kneelsit was right in one aspect though....it is "ego-stroking". Damn tooting it is and we use Alexa's Certified Traffic graphic on our site, and proudly display it where the user can see it. I say why not? As they say...."If you got it, flaunt it baby!".
The User Reviews are also a good Site Promotion advantage....if you enjoy good reviews. I can see where this aspect of it can actually damage your site if a competitor who plays dirty can load your reviews up with some nasty comments. So this could be a good thing or a bad thing.
The worst data I can honestly say is their reporting of incoming links. I have no idea how they come up with it or where they get it from. It is not from Google or any other place that I can think of. Often the data is some vague page capture of a search result from obscure ISP's front page. It is meaningless to me and IMHO worthless.
Finally as tools go the Alexa toolbar is pretty darn good. But it is also just a tool, and I like to get the input of other tools such as the Google bar, sneakily looking at other site's free tracking data, and some other techniques to put it all together with. To build a house you will need more than a hammer and saw to build it effeciently with....sometimes a screwdriver, drill and a nail gun will get the job done more effectively.
I also liken the Alexa Toolbar as the CNN of the Web Tools World....overused, overhyped and depending on your viewpoint the "Most (dis)Trusted Name in Tools". I for one get my news from more than one source and it is no different in the tools game.