Why Alexa Stinks…
When I first found Alexa.com I though “oh boy, what a great way to see how much traffic is coming to my sites!” Unfortunately, as I’ve used it I’ve found that it is not very reliable. For example on one of my sites, www.OrtizPots.com, I have been working on adding new content. As I have done that, I have seen a steady increase in traffic. However, Alexa shows that it is steadly decreasing. In all fairness, Alexa is probably working - HOWEVER it is important to remember what Alexa does:
* it gives you the amount of traffic of people who have downloaded the Alexa toolbar (which is not everyone)
* it only tells you the PC users who have visited your site (Alexa does not count Mac users)
So, if you do use Alexa, just be wary of the results and check everything against the stats on your webserver.
March 27th, 2005 at 9:27 am
None of the indexers are wholly accurate. Even Technorati, which many people swear by, doesn’t count everything consistently. Neither does Google, Findory, etc. The only thing you can rely upon is your own sitemeter traffic stats.
April 25th, 2005 at 4:08 am
Didn’t Alexa used to put Gator or some other adware/spyware on users computers? Do they still do that?