Do you use Alexa?

Alexa is a webmaster website designed to rank websites from 1 to whatever. Millions of websites are registered there along with Gamers Forum.

So how do they calculate alexa rank? They have a little toolbar you can use with your browser. If you have it installed, and you visit a web site, you count as a visitor to them. If you don't have it installed, you are no one to them.

So do you use it? Their site is: Alexa the Web Information Company

I never used their toolbar so I was never a visitor to any of their registered web sites. I think it's bad to rank web sites based on who visited with their own toolbar. I know it's their only way to track visitors - but they could have worked with web sites and install some form of code to track the visitors, but they didn't.

Nah, I don't use it. Some of my friends do, but I don't really like tool bars.

I use it. It doesn't get in the way or anything. It just sits in the Related Links category.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Samus-Fan

Nah, I don't use it. Some of my friends do, but I don't really like tool bars.

---

I don't have too many friends that use them either. But I go around webmaster forums and see people ranting about if your alexa rank is bad, you have no visitors and that makes me mad because those are far from being accurate.

And also, Gamers Forum's traffic has more than doubled now and we rank 500,000 something - when we ranked about 250,000 our visitor count was still pretty low but I guess we had more alexa users visit us than non-alexa users lol

oh and alexa used to be more popular a year ago than it is now

@trunks - you have their toolbar? or what related links...lol

they should have counted members instead of visitors

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LiNuX

I don't have too many friends that use them either. But I go around webmaster forums and see people ranting about if your alexa rank is bad, you have no visitors and that makes me mad because those are far from being accurate.

And also, Gamers Forum's traffic has more than doubled now and we rank 500,000 something - when we ranked about 250,000 our visitor count was still pretty low but I guess we had more alexa users visit us than non-alexa users lol

oh and alexa used to be more popular a year ago than it is now

@trunks - you have their toolbar? or what related links...lol

---

Their tool bar isn't much of a toolbar. I don't even noticed it that much. It tells you what rank the site your on, it's located at the bottom right hand corner of the page. When you download it, you get a "Related Links" Category, that's up by Tools and History. It just shows you sites that are related to the one you are on. It's not like other toolbars that just get in the way. I say you guys should at least try it out, you won't even notice.

No, I've got plenty of toolbars already.

I never heard of it before.
But I definitely don't like how it works.
Only tracking users using THEIR toolbar? Stupid.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Trunks

Their tool bar isn't much of a toolbar. I don't even noticed it that much. It tells you what rank the site your on, it's located at the bottom right hand corner of the page. When you download it, you get a "Related Links" Category, that's up by Tools and History. It just shows you sites that are related to the one you are on. It's not like other toolbars that just get in the way. I say you guys should at least try it out, you won't even notice.

---

yeah i know how they show the info, i just never used them - i only found out about them when a webmaster buddy of mine told me how they functioned - i didn't like it so i didnt care for them lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rukisuto

I never heard of it before.
But I definitely don't like how it works.
Only tracking users using THEIR toolbar? Stupid.

---

yea - but thats the only way they can keep track of web sites - i did say it would have been better if they would allow web sites to register on the site and put in a form of code in their web page and track the IP addresses of the visitors and see how many visits you get there - this way, refreshes will only count as 1 visitor for the day or month or whatever, and its a hell of a lot more accurate

but i highly doubt they will change their ways lol - they are still one of the largest sites in the internet - their popularity has gone down in the past year or so though

used it before when I naive to think it was accurate.

i neve really used it, heard of it, never used it, and i think i found out they werent very accurate from you linux lol, so thats even worse and another reason why i wont use them in the future

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by diablo

i neve really used it, heard of it, never used it, and i think i found out they werent very accurate from you linux lol, so thats even worse and another reason why i wont use them in the future

---

good to see i have some influence on some people lol

The program is accurate..... It ranks websites right and moderates the views right. The program is perfectly accurate. If you are saying it's not accurate, because you have to use the program, then almost everything isn't accurate. You can't say the program isn't accurate just because you need the tool bar for it to count views. It's not like that for just this site. It's like that for all the sites...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Trunks

The program is accurate..... It ranks websites right and moderates the views right. The program is perfectly accurate. If you are saying it's not accurate, because you have to use the program, then almost everything isn't accurate. You can't say the program isn't accurate just because you need the tool bar for it to count views. It's not like that for just this site. It's like that for all the sites...

---

no its not - they only count visitors that use the toolbar - they have no other way of tracking visitors unless there is some form of code or script within the web site

Google Analytics is a traffic monitoring program - THATS at least 50x more accurate because they use a code in the coding portion of the web page, generally in the footer. They keep track of which IP has visited, how long the person has been on the site, how many pages he viewed, etc.

And if alexa was accurate, it would have shown our traffic rise - I can show you proof right now that over the past few months our traffic has gone up a great deal and alexa did not record that and the only explanation is that we aren't getting as many people use alexa as we did before.

and the last half of your paragraph is really confusing especially this part: "It's not like that for just this site. It's like that for all the sites..."

I have a visitor tracker on this forum. It logs visitors through IPs and Cookies and hostnames. It's about 99% accurate without a doubt.

I understand that, but it's accurate compared to all the other sites. Other forums are not at an advantage, it just depends who has the toolbar. There could be forums that have 10 times as many members as us, but they are a lower rank. The program basically shows how many people use alexa..... Maybe that's how they wanted to determine the ranks.

Nah, doubt it.

That is the only way they have figured out how to do it with.
Wouldn't you want to advertise at any given moment for you to make some cash?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Samus-Fan

Nah, doubt it.

That is the only way they have figured out how to do it with.
Wouldn't you want to advertise at any given moment for you to make some cash?

---

Um, no read what linux said about that....... It wouldn't be that hard to make.....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Trunks

I understand that, but it's accurate compared to all the other sites. Other forums are not at an advantage, it just depends who has the toolbar. There could be forums that have 10 times as many members as us, but they are a lower rank. The program basically shows how many people use alexa..... Maybe that's how they wanted to determine the ranks.

---

members and visitors are different - alexa doesn't care how many members we have - they care about who visited the forum with their toolbar installed

and by accurate - we are just saying compared to the real stats - alexa stats are WAYYYYY off. thats what i mean by accuracy - not comparing it to other websites that have the same way of tracking visitors - their method is just inaccurate to calculate visitors and rank them based on the information

and ya, your last part is right - they want people to use alexa - they get paid a lot from advertisements and the more toolbars installed probably gets them more money - and they wanted to determine the ranks this way because they thought this would be something that EVERYONE uses - if EVERYONE used it then its a different story but only a small percentage of internet goers actually use the alexa toolbar - they really should have come up with another way to rank the sites - probably would have been used a lot more