Weaknesses and Limitations of Alexa Rankings Data

Aaron Wall, a widely read search engine optimization blogger at SEObook.com, comments about the ups and downs of Alexa rankings — and how they may have very little resemblance to actual traffic levels as measured by site server logs. And an affiliate marketing blog comments that Alexa data should be taken with a grain of salt.

In our own article about Using Alexa and the Alexa Toolbar as Strategic Marketing Tools, we explored how useful the data from Alexa can be, both for augmenting your understanding of your own site’s traffic and for looking around the competitive landscape. But we also noted that Alexa seems to be a little too optimistic about the accuracy of its own data and explained how the influence of in-house users equipped with the Alexa toolbar (download) could grossly distort apparent traffic levels — a problem which is particularly noticeable with human-edited directories and other collaboratively produced sites.

The upshot for private practitioners looking for a third-party source of reliable (and free) data about traffic levels? Alexa is probably the best available at the moment, just be careful how you interpret what it’s telling you.

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