Is Alexa useful as an analytics tool?
Recently I wrote a post about an SEO client who puts a lot of faith into their Google Page Rank. I have another SEO client who looks at their Alexa ratings as their barometer of how well their website is ranking. They recently asked me about Alexa and I had to admit, I don’t really pay attention to Alexa. I put it down to the bad taste left in my mouth from installing other toolbars to my system. I just never trusted them after one bad incident. However, my curiosity was piqued so I decided to give Alexa another shot. A closer look reveals a pretty picture that promises much but offers little.
Alexa’s problem is simple – accuracy. Alexa gathers information from users who have the Alexa Toolbar (or in my case the Firefox plug-in) installed. The only number for Alexa I can find is somewhere in the 10% range.
If the data collected was from a much broader cross-section of the population then I might consider it more useful. At around 10% it is mindful of the Neilsen Ratings system. Their version of analytics leaves a lot to be desired. The ability to see the demographics of users, broken up into age, gender, education, with/out children and location (home/work) doesn’t seem particularly useful for any of my client’s immediate needs.
The ability to see where people go after they view your site is again not exactly useful. What could be useful is the ability to view the information for any web site – quite handy for spying on competitors.
Of course, I say the information could be useful with the emphasis on the ‘could’ simply because of reliability. To check this out, I looked at the stats for one of my own sites and, according to Alexa, it received little to no search traffic yet I know that 55% of its traffic comes from the search engines.
The other statistics bare little resemblance to other more reliable web analytics packages. If you want to check out your statistics through Alexa then simply type the Alexa URL followed by /siteinfo/ and your url – alexa.com/siteinfo/yoursite.xxx
Just try not to put too much stock into it. Alexa and Google PR are two barometers, but you really should be discussing your goals for your online marketing with your SEO/Online Marketing consultant.
