Alexa Traffic Detail

With Amazon introducing the A9 search engine of late and Alexa Internet providing some of the data for the results, the search engine game has another player in the field. One aspect that is hard to pin down is Alexa's Traffic Detail and how it will affect those results -- will it be the equivalent of Google PR?



The Alexa Traffic Detail ranking is derived in part from tracking data that is sent back by users of the Alexa Toolbar. It is well known how easy it is to shoot your ranking up with use of this toolbar.



To prove that fact, please note the following chart which is the work of two individuals. I know this to be true, for I am one of them and I know who the other one is. I also know that it is only two people because the site was not officially open until March 15th, yet the site was already in the high 50's in late February.

This brings me to one of the funnier theories I have seen to date to justify Alexa Traffic Detail. It is a persons attempt to come up with a mathematical formula to predict Alexa Traffic Details. In fact in the footnotes of this chart it admits to taking out "some outliers so that the trend line represents the relationship 58% of the time."



They have asked not to copy the chart to your site (not that I would), so I will leave it up to you to view the chart and look at the blue dots close to the 0, 0 axis point. Hopefully you will see a blue dot that represents the 3 month average of 51,000 and approximately 100 unique visitors per day. This may be considered an "outlier" and not be included into the formula.



Many website owners use the Alexa Traffic Details for trend analysis. This practice can and will lead them to believe something that really is not there. The ease at which the ranking can be influenced by a wide assortment of outliers. One scenario is the direct correlation of finally achieving a PR4 or PR5 on your site and then a noticeable spike will appear on your Traffic Details. This is usually attributable to a competitor checking your site out for their own reasons, one may be they are looking for a link exchange because of your new found PR boost.



I was corresponding with another website owner through email back in November of last year while helping him with a few problems on his site. This involved quite a few page views of his site during the process. At that time he noticed that his Alexa Ranking went up. I boldly told him that I could predict his ranking for the next week, and he bit. I turned off my Alexa Toolbar during the following week and his levels went back to right about where I told them they would be. He was in shock. Dan if you are reading this, now you know the rest of the story!



So what good is the Alexa Traffic Details? Nothing that I can see. But if you have a good one, might as well flaunt it. Just don't do it in front of me and expect me to fall for it though.