Wed Dec 26 06:03:17 PST 2018

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The problems with Alexa are the following:
? My site is not as important as the above graph shows. If it were, I
might be retired by now. ?
? Alexa does not get much direct traffic and has a limited reach with its
toolbar.
? A small change in site visitor count can represent a huge change in
Alexa ratings.
? Alexa is biased toward webmaster traffic.
? Many times new webmasters are only tracking themselves visiting their
own site.
Why do many marketing hucksters heavily promote Alexa? Usually for one of the
following reasons:
? Ignorance
? If you install the Alexa toolbar and then watch your own Alexa rating
quickly rise as you surf your own site, it is easy for me to tell you that
you are learning quickly and seeing great results, thus it is easy to sell
my customers? results as being some of the best on the market
? If many people who visit my site about marketing install the Alexa
toolbar, then my Alexa rating would go exceptionally high
? The marketers may associate their own rise in success with their
increasing Alexa ranking, although it happens to be more of an issue of
self-selection than a direct correlation

A lower Alexa number means a greater level of traffic and the traffic drops off
logarithmically. You can fake a good Alexa score using various techniques, but if it
shows your rankings in the millions, then your site likely has next to no traffic.
Alexa by itself does not mean much. It simply provides a rough snapshot of what
is going on. Also, it is hard to compare sites in different industries. For example, if
I created a site about weight loss, there would be many more people searching for
it than a site about SEO. Also, you shouldn?t forget the webmaster bias the tool