Alexa Ranks Top 5 Search Engines By Traffic - You Vote

[greeneagle]

Reviewing Alexa Traffic Rankings of the top 500 English Sites these 5 Search Engines Rank in the top 10 Sites.
Alexa Ranks Top 5 Search Engines By Traffic You Vote, WHo is your favorite, all things considered; search relevancy to webmaster friendliness:
(1)YAHOO
(2)MSN
(3)GOOGLE
(8)Go
(10)AOL
A very interesting fact is that Microsoft came in with 3 of the top 10 trafficted websites and all had search features:
Top English Language Sites

Updated Daily

1. Yahoo! Inc.
www.yahoo.com - Site info


2. Msn.com
www.msn.com - Site info


3. Google.com
www.google.com - Site info


4. Microsoft Corporation
www.microsoft.com - Site info


5. EBay Inc.
www.ebay.com - Site info


6. Passport.net
www.passport.net - Site info


7. Amazon.com
www.amazon.com - Site info


8. Go
www.go.com - Site info


9. CNN Interactive
www.cnn.com - Site info


10. AOL Anywhere
www.aol.com - Site info


Vote for your favorite:
Note: Alexa disclaims absolute accuracy due to the method in which stats are accumulated on their website.

[Whit]

The Alexa stats only reflect the total traffic to the site. In order to even remotely gain an idea of how much of this traffic is actually going to searches you need to look at the percentage of traffic that is going to the subdomain where searches end up. Yahoo lands on search.yahoo.com for instance - only 6% of traffic goes there. search.msn.com only accounts for 7% of msn.com traffic. For a large list of search engines with Alexa traffic break downs by percentages see http://www.searchenginetrends.com

[greeneagle]

Google shows your site as having x-sites(double digits) linking in and Alexa shows no Data, eventhough they rank you well within the top 200K sites on the Internet (quite an achievement!). I am impressed and lost - Haven't seen anything like that before. Surely you have an idea what is going on!
Ken

[Whit]

Not really that unusual. Being within the top 200k sites on Alexa is easy to do, especially if you have the toolbar installed and make frequent updates to your site.
The site it self is only slightly over 2 months old and is just coming out of beta. I just haven't bothered to fill in my personal information on Alexa (I've been too busy building the site) and becuase of the relatively short time the site has been around Alexa hasn't developed a nice list of "people who visit this site also visit.." links.
Google shows a lot of inbound links because I have followed the advice of these fine Gurus at webproworld and aggressively sought complimentary link exchanges. Thanks to their advice, Janeth especially, my Google PR started at a 4. Not all of the inbound links are showing up on google yet though.
I'm expecting a nice shot in the arm once Google finds my listing in DMOZ and makes its way around to all of the related listings caused by sites using ODP++ and similar scripts. I have noticed that searches for "searchenginetrends" return a lot of these sites on Google.

[minstrel]

A major problem with Alexa rankings is that they are based on data obtained from a non-representative sample of internet users - specifically, only those internet users who have allowed Alexa to install itself on their systems and track their internet browsing habits.

Many internet users do not have Alexa installed - I am one of them. So none of the visits I make to sites or even which sites I visit are included in the Alexa database.

It's a Statistics 101 sampling error issue.

[greeneagle]

Just about any sample population of a larger body is going to be off a little. Ususally in large samples the margin of error is around +/- 4 or 5% max. Alexa admits this in their own disclaimer. But, they don't just include their toolbar users, they also include Alexa Search Engines use by surfers without the toolbar.

[minstrel]

Just about any sample population of a larger body is going to be off a little.

I'm not talking about normal sampling error or "confidence limits" or being "off a little" - I'm talking about a more fundamental error in sampling procedures, the kind that prohibits you from generalizing beyond that particular sample because it is not representative of the "general population" for whatever you're studying. The Alexa database is not derived from the net at large but from the viewing and searching habits of their users, toolbar installed or not. That's a very different issue - it's akin to, say, trying to draw conclusions about general public opinion in the U.S. based only on the opinions of Republicans in Texas with a satellite dish.

[greeneagle]

Minstrel Wrote:

"I'm not talking about normal sampling error or "confidence limits" or being "off a little" - I'm talking about a more fundamental error in sampling procedures,..."

Who am I to question obvious virtual realities? In your profession, you are much better equipped to determine that a large sample population of Alexa Toolbar users do not represent the whole!

Ken

[joliettech]

Gentlemen,

The Alexa ranking are only relevant to you and the sites that you manage. Personally on our site, approximately 85% of the hits are from search engines. Of these hits 80 to 85% are from Google, 10 to 15% are split between MSN and Yahoo, the rest are from various only search engines (very few, if any from Alexa).

As far as my favorite, I use MSN. The results returned are usually relevant and I can usually find what I’m looking for. If MSN doesn’t produce the results I’m looking for I go to Google or Yahoo or AltaVista or Excite.

My Top 5:
#1 - MSN
#2 - Google
#3 - Yahoo
#4 - AltaVista
#5 - Excite

[greeneagle]

joliettech,

Let me tell you what my number 1 search string is this month so far:

"detecting internet fraud"

Is that sad or what? - It hurts all of us - We are going to expand our Webmasters Resources Pages substantially within the next 2 months (from 9 to 90 pages) to help serve these problems -
I hope they bust them all!
Let's work together as webmasters to make the Internet a friendlier space!

If Content instead of keywords are "King" we are going to be there!

There is really no more allowance for simple, commercial "WE ARE IN BUSINESS BROCHURES", and it is time every webmaster that represents a client and themselves understands this!
Ken