Alexa Related Links [Archive]

WildSeeker

12-12-2003, 12:49 PM

Leisa

12-16-2003, 04:07 AM

Hi WildSeeker! Are you saying that you want to be listed as a related link for other sites or have related links listed for your site?

WildSeeker

12-16-2003, 07:45 AM

I am really curious how the whole 'related links' process works with Alexa. It certainly would be nice to have my site listed as a related link for other sites.

What has drawn my my attention to it is the fact that when I pull up my site there are no related links. Is it a function or users with the Alexa toolbar who view a particular site and then view others? Basically, how are related sites determined?

minstrel

12-16-2003, 09:56 AM

It's been a while since I looked closely at Alexa because I decided that the concept was flawed, but as I understood it at the time "related sites" were basically "people who visited your site also visited these sites" - i.e., it's based on their database derived from the web surfing habits of individuals who installed Alexa on their systems.

ronniethedodger

12-16-2003, 12:00 PM

I was also under the impression that anyone could submit related site info via a form at Alexa also. They do not need to be an Alexa Toolbar user to do this.

I tried submitting my site to various sites that were truely related (translation: competitor sites). After the submission I recieved their stock email reply that it will be reviewed and there is no guarantee that they will be listed...blah...blah...blah.

To date the "no gurantee that they will be included" is correct, for my site still has not been listed as a related site. Whether they review it or not, is another question. My belief is that they do not have the manpower or time to do thorough enough research into these matters.

Users have the option to turn off a feature in the toolbar that keeps a history of the last 10 or 15 pages that you visit -- it is called "The Web I Built" feature. I have this option turned off, for I do believe that is how they compile the related site information. I do not want it knowing my surfing habits, because I bounce around between my site and competitor sites all too frequently.

Whether or not the accuracy of other features at Alexa are in question is becoming a moot point. Some search engines are using the Alexa data for Traffic Detail and the Related Sites to feed their results with. I forget offhand right now which search engines are using this data, but there is more than one of them and it appears that they are worth taking notice of and learning how to take advantage of it.

All that aside -- the stranger information that they serve up is the Sites Linking In. I have reviewed other sites as well as my own, and there is no rhyme or reason to how they come up with this data. All too often a majority of these linkbacks are to cgi driven search queries at various ISP home pages. The linkbacks are not the traditional links that you would see anywhere else like Google, Alta Vista, AllTheWeb, etc.

I am in agreement with Minstrel in that this all seems flawed. But I would also add that this is a unique opportunity to exploit that weakness.

minstrel

12-16-2003, 12:06 PM

I would also add that this is a unique opportunity to exploit that weakness.
That's part of what worries me about the concept. At this point, I am only aware of one SE using Alexa but frankly I hope the notion doesn't spread...

ronniethedodger

12-16-2003, 12:13 PM

...frankly I hope the notion doesn't spread...

Then we will just keep that between ourselves for the time being !! ;-)

WildSeeker

12-16-2003, 01:48 PM

What would you suppose that the Alexa spider is looking for when it crawls a site. Assuming they are building their related links from traffic that is tracked on user's Alexa toolbar and their back-link references are a bit obscure, what could the spider be doing?

I tried submitting my site to various sites that were truely related

I too have attempted to submit related links to no success. The information coming to light in this thread certainly does bring into question the value that Alexa is providing. It appears the value is more to Alexa than any other particular user.

kjohnson5576

12-16-2003, 02:51 PM

As far as I can tell, the Alexa Spider doesn't spider very often. The picture from my site is about 5 months old. This is the holiday season and I'm getting tremendous amounts of traffic, 2X my average, yet my traffic rank hasn't moved in a month or so.

Alexa listed my incoming links about 2 months ago for the first time in almost a year, and it hasn't changed them again.

What they have changed is the people who have reviewed my site. I had 6 reviews, now I have 4. The names of the people were listed, now, no names. It also takes you to Amazon.com to read the reviews, not to an Alexa page.

Quite frankly, I don't know what Alexa is doing or hopes to do with its data. Anyone know what their plan is? or was?

ronniethedodger

12-16-2003, 03:13 PM

The information coming to light in this thread certainly does bring into question the value that Alexa is providing. It appears the value is more to Alexa than any other particular user.

The value to Alexa, is the value to Amazon. They are one in the same.

The purpose of the toolbar is two-fold. It is Amazon's way of tracking traffic patterns, and having the ever present link to their site on the toolbar itself.

I am also seeing some rise in popularity among website owners, in that they are promoting the so-called branded toolbar more and more.

If the toolbar gains any momentum at all, then the results that Alexa reports "should" come more and more into line with actual traffic trends. How they choose to serve up the results of this data will then begin to show what kind of integrity they have.

As for the Alexa Spider ... they crawl into places that other spiders are not even aware of.

I have an Apache Server running on my computer for testing purposes. The IP address of the server is a dynamic one and not known to any NSP services, etc.

I accessed this server thru the Internet with the Alexa Toolbar running with the option for history tracking selected. The toolbar did make note of the IP address and within 48 hours, it had crawled the entire root directory of the server. Shortly after that my server was listed on Alexa, complete with a thumbnail image of the Index page.

dealercrm

12-16-2003, 03:29 PM

I accessed this server thru the Internet with the Alexa Toolbar running with the option for history tracking selected. The toolbar did make note of the IP address and within 48 hours, it had crawled the entire root directory of the server. Shortly after that my server was listed on Alexa, complete with a thumbnail image of the Index page.

Alexa has always been a good hog for sucking up sites that have yet to make it to the public face of search engines, directories and the sort.

But does this help in any other way then to help Alexa and their Way back Machine to archive the web. Do these findings by the Alexa crawler populate to other engines?

My answer to that is NO. Why? From creating a site with about 20 pages. I launched it without telling a sole, even a search engine, or a directory... left it completely up to ALEXA... So the site sits with it stats indicating the only users as Alexa, Me, and Netcraft Web Server Survey (which netcraft is a complete other story)

So what is the benefit of Alexa?

I believe your related links, traffic rating, and reviews increase over time based on browser activity. The more traffic the better and more focused your links will become.

However I have seen sites that have high traffic and the related sites are very poor to compare by TOPIC. So is the logic of ALEXA flawed?

cbp

12-17-2003, 06:19 AM

minstrel

12-17-2003, 08:23 AM

For most sites the Alexa related links appear to come from DMOZ (related links for all my sites are all straight from the category at DMOZ) - not so sure about sites that are not in DMOZ.
hmmm....

I used to be under the impression that related links came from either subissions or from where visitors with the ALexa toolbar came from or went after visiting a site - but this would be difficult for Alexa to handle.
As far as I know, this is exactly where the database comes from.

If this was the case then I would submit porn sites as related links for my competitors or I would visit my competitors site, then go to a porn site so Alexa would think that they are related - its pretty unlikely that this would or could happen.
I presume that Alexa has some mechanism for screening the so-called related links but frankly I don't have great confidence in how well they do this. Last time I had a look at their so-called "related sites" they didn't look all that well related to me.

CBP[/quote]

cbp

12-17-2003, 03:31 PM

The reason I am so sure that the related links come from DMOZ is that there maybe 20-30 good sites that are related to mine - only 9 are listed as related to mine - all 9 are the 9 in the DMOZ category (one of the nine is NOT related to any of the sites, but is still listed). - for other sites its not 100% DMOZ and appears to be from an old DMOZ (>8-9months ago). Go to a small DMOZ category click on a site --> most of the other sites are listed as related sites.

ALexa is one of the downstream users of DMOZ.

CBP

cbp

12-17-2003, 03:51 PM

minstrel

Here (http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/Canada/Ontario/Localities/O/Ottawa/Health/Mental_Health/Counseling_Services/) is the category that your site is in at DMOZ.

They are the sites that Alexa lists as 'related links' for your site.

CBP

minstrel

12-17-2003, 08:10 PM

Here (http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/Canada/Ontario/Localities/O/Ottawa/Health/Mental_Health/Counseling_Services/) is the category that your site is in at DMOZ. They are the sites that Alexa lists as 'related links' for your site.
Is that from a recent Alexa toolbar result? I dumped Alexa after a brief trial a couple of years ago - at that time their related links were showing all kinds of weird things that weren't at all related to my site and it was certainly longer than the ODP list.

As an aside, I have to wonder why the ODP list is so short - I know I have a lot more competitors in Ottawa than ODP shows... and ODP doesn't even have the major ones listed - in fact, I have never even heard of 3 of the 7 sites on that list. I find that passing strange...

Alexa is one of the downstream users of DMOZ.
So is Google. However, clicking on "Similar Pages" in the Google toolbar gives me a much larger list, most of which are in fact really related, but it also includes two that have no relevance at all to my psychology/self-help site, including:

Hotel and Motel Discounts and Coupons on RoomSaver.com
Get coupons and discounts for your hotel or vacation resort. Search by
zipcode, the map, or the menu below. Get Coupons for…. ...
www.roomsaver.com/ - 43k - Cached - Similar pages

and

Used Cars, Sell Your Car, Auto Financing & Insurance - AutoTrader ...
Research & Compare Shopping for NEW, USED or CERTIFIED cars? Get the latest pricing,
specs and reviews. NEW Car Research Used Car Research. Research & Compare, ...
Description: Features decision guides, reviews and photo ads of new and used vehicles available for sale.
Category: Shopping > Vehicles > Autos > Buyer Services
www.autotrader.com/ - 36k - Cached - Similar pages

...unless the first one is linked because one of my pages is called "map.htm" (directions to my office) and the second one because it includes the words "certified", "reviews" (as in books), and "research"?

cbp

12-17-2003, 10:27 PM

cbp wrote:
Here is the category that your site is in at DMOZ. They are the sites that Alexa lists as 'related links' for your site.

Is that from a recent Alexa toolbar result? I dumped Alexa after a brief trial a couple of years ago - at that time their related links were showing all kinds of weird things that weren't at all related to my site and it was certainly longer than the ODP list.

The list of sites in your category at DMOZ is exactly the same as what the Alexa tool bar shows.

CBP

minstrel

12-17-2003, 11:50 PM

cbp

12-18-2003, 12:13 AM

And then there is the Yahoo toolbar... and the Real toolbar ... and the ...

I do not know if you can enable the privacy on the Alexa one as the whole purpose of it is to send info back to Alexa :-(
... that would be worth it if anyone really took the Alexa rankings seriously :-) ... but I think as you might have mentioned earlier in this thread, one of the minor search engines maybe using the data.

CBP

ofoglada

12-18-2003, 05:27 PM

From what i understand you need to submit related links. Not sure if there is an automated way or not. All i know is ive submitted related links for www.bfoleyinteractive.com about 5 times over 6 months and never have seen any related links. Think amazon is too busy building their new search engine to worry about this. >shrug<

B

ronniethedodger

12-19-2003, 05:23 PM

Hmmm... interesting... maybe it's time to buy a larger monitor so I have room for the Google toolbar as well as the Alexa one... can you disable tracking with Alexa as you can with Google? I am sort of obsessive about privacy...

Yes, you can disable the tracking feature of the Alexa toolbar. They refer to it as "The Web That You Build" function. All this is is the last five entries in your back history.

And, cbp is right. DMOZ does match your related sites info. Here is a link to Alexa that will show you those results.

http://info.alexa.com/data/details?amzn_id=alexa65-tb-20&url=http://www.psychlinks.ca/

You can get any of the information provided by the Alexa toolbar without having the toolbar installed. All you need to do is just go to www.alexa.com and type in any url into the search box that you want the information on.

I think cbp's observation is a very good one indeed. Alexa is using DMOZ for the related sites info as a starting point to populate their database with...as does Google in it's results. Google on the other hand has other things working for them to supplement that list of results, which is why Google's list is more comprehensive -- and, it is not as lame as Alexa's attempt.

minstrel

12-19-2003, 09:54 PM

Google on the other hand has other things working for them to supplement that list of results, which is why Google's list is more comprehensive -- and, it is not as lame as Alexa's attempt.
LOL...

...and here I was trying to be diplomatic and politically correct ;o)

RemodelingGuy

12-20-2003, 01:51 AM

Greetings!

I have a general question about Alexa. How does it pull together what it deems 'related links'. My site - http://www.wildseeker.com - has been 'live' for about six months now and it still does not have any related links on Alexa. Any thoughts on Alexa?

Alexa is a USED TO BE!

They index sites from folks using their service, which is on a decline so RAPID, that it's a blurrrrrrrrrr!

IMHO!

- J

ronniethedodger

12-20-2003, 12:36 PM

Alexa is a USED TO BE!

They index sites from folks using their service, which is on a decline so RAPID, that it's a blurrrrrrrrrr!

IMHO!

You have a right to your opinion, but I do not think it's service is on a decline. I think it is completely the opposite...although it is not a rapid blur as you put it.

Alexa will remain for quite some time, for it is after all part of the Amazon machine. For good or bad, right or wrong, this one factor will keep it alive for a long, long time.

I am also seeing more and more promotion of the Alexa toolbar from various websites every day. It is not as blatantly obvious as all of those Amazon "recommended books" that occupy so many web pages today, but the free toolbar is there none-the-less.

Also, I am aware of one search engine that is now using their data feed to supplement their results with. It seems to me that there is a second SE out there that is using the feed also, but I am not totally sure about that.

All of this points to an incline. How fast of an incline, I cannot say...but it is not a decline.

In my opinion, you should take heed of what they are doing with that service and how it can affect you. Not so much whether you fair well in their skewed reporting of traffic details, but in a couple of other areas of their reporting such as the user reviews and related links.

You can choose to ignore Alexa or learn how to use it to your advantage...or at the very least -- keep an eye on Alexa and make sure that their service does not project you in an unfavorable light.

Heed these two warnings. Always check in from time to time and view the user reviews of your site !! Always check in from time to time to view sites that are linking to yours, as Alexa sees it !!

User reviews do not require the Alexa toolbar to be entered into your site profile. Anyone with a javascript enabled browser can submit a review for your site at Alexa. I don't have to say any more than that about what that could or could not mean.

Their data on links to your site, from what I can see, does come from the toolbar to some extent. How it actually works is uncertain. Whether they get this data from other sources is uncertain as well. What is certainly true, is that a lot of these links
come from places that you would not normally see in a backlink listing at other SE's such as Google, AV, MSN or any other place. In most cases these links are coming from sites that have no relation to your site in particular. Quite often when you go to check the pages that Alexa is reporting to have a link to your site, you will find that there is not even a link there at all. (okay Minstrel....pipe in here with your "things that make you go....hmmmmm") =)

That is about all I have to say on this IMHO !!!