BroadVision Marketing Blog

Gaurav Ojha of TechPluto asked the question, “Is Alexa Web Analytics Flawed and Inaccurate?” He mentioned two other services you might want to look into Complete and comScore as sites to view traffic on your own web as well as scope out your competition’s traffic. You can read about them and a few others below.



Alexa has been on the internet since 1996 and is known as a web monitor, but the question is does the analytic accurately give results? In a previous blog I talked about how Alexa tracks people who view a website. The way they are counted is through the Alexa toolbar or integrated sidebars for Chrome and Firefox.

Alexa, owned by Amazon.com, is a popular analytic because of its toolbar. The toolbar includes a search function, popup blocker, and a website info portrayal. After users download and install the toolbar, data related to the sites they visit is sent to Alexa servers and then compared to all other sites worldwide.

Ojha then asked if Alexa is accurate? Since the usage and traffic are checked through the toolbar, only users and computers with the toolbar installed and working can contribute to the ranking.

Here is how Ojha explains the problem in simple math. Say you have two websites A and B. You also have two different computers that both visit the websites. Let’s call them X and Y. Computer X has an Alexa toolbar and Y doesn’t. You visit your website A once a day using computer X and you visit site B twice a day with computer Y. At the end of the day the toolbar sees that website A got a better rank even though B was visited more often. You aren’t getting an actual count of visitors using the Alexa toolbar.

Since Alexa has been around for 15 years, most website owners have Alexa toolbars and they can monitor the traffic on their websites and others. However, as we saw in the previous blog there are many ways to artificially manipulate the ranking.  You can do things like write a second blog on Alexa.

Let’s look at some alternatives the Ojha mentions. Compete has a good monitoring system getting statistics from two different sources, one a toolbar and the other ISPs.  It is for a U.S. community only. That needs to be borne in mind if your business has overseas visitors.

Quantcast, a newcomer, has had good results, but keeps it methodology a deep, dark secret. Are you into secret sauce?

comScore is good, taking data through benefits like free prizes and email antivirus offers. However, there is a software and security risk involved with them.

To compare with the above, there are some other drawbacks to Alexa. Windows Defender lists Alexa toolbar are “malware”. Symantic calls it “trackware” and McAfee says it is “adware”.

Here is a kicker from Ojha. Alexa ranked YouTube ahead of Google. Can that be possible in a world of techspeak that has changed the word for “search” to “google”?

Even after knowing what I know about Alexa numbers not being a good indicator of the number of people visiting your site, I am going to suggest you get the toolbar. If you are using Internet Explorer, visit this page and download the Alexa Toolbar. Go to Toolbar for the Alexa Toolbar for Firefox.

The reason I am suggesting you do this is that in certain foreign countries where more people have the Alexa Toolbar, they are beating you to the good Alexa numbers. Here are two facts from the past. At one time a Singapore website with 10k visitors a day ranked 60k in Alexa.  An Indonesian site with just 1k visitors a day ranked 30k in Alexa. You need an Alexa toolbar, so you can compete.

Special thanks go to Gaurav Ojha and his site http://www.techpluto.com/is-alexa-accurate/

Have you tried Quantcast or Compete? Have you thought about comScore? Are you willing to stay with Alexa? Please put your answers in the comment box below.

Jaco Grobbelaar, owner of BroadVision Marketing, helps business owners and business professionals put marketing strategies in place that consistently secure new clients. He can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.799.1238. You can “Like” him at www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing or connect with him on  www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.

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