Posted by Brian Cryer on 10/24/07 10:54

"pidipady" <hastover@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1193082598.524117.32060@y27g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
> Is Alexa Traffic Rankings a good indicator of a successful website?
> My website has a rank of 398,832. Is that average or below/above?

Alexa Traffic Rankings are a guide, but not a very accurate one.

The rankings are generated from information Alexa receive from those who
have installed the Alexa toolbar into their browser. The theory goes
something along the lines of if x% of the population (where x is probably
quite small) use the Alexa toolbar then the rankings are based on an average
cross section of the community, and therefore the rankings are a reasonable
indication. The problem is that because the proportion of people who uses
the Alexa toolbar is (I think, but can't prove) relatively small, the cross
section isn't that representative. The single easiest way to boost the alexa
ranking of your own site is to install the alexa toolbar and visit your own
site - even if you only visit your own site a few times a week (and I'm sure
most webmasters visit their own site more frequently) that is normally
enough to see the ranking of your site increased.

I don't know how many sites Alexa has in their system, so don't know what
the average rank would be. So can't comment on whether your rank of 398,832
is good or bad.

Alexa rank is a bit like the google page-rank, in that its a guide only and
not something to loose sleep over.

Probably a better indication is do you get the number of visitors you want?
Are you making the revenue that you want/need (assuming its a revenue
generating site and not a hobby).

I did put together some notes on determining web site popularity/ranking
(http://www.cryer.co.uk/resources/popularity.htm), but looking over it now
those notes are a little old and I really ought to revisit, but it might be
of interest to you.

Hope this helps.
--
Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian

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