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I handle the SEO of the company's website.

Last month we peaked at a national Alexa Rank of around 30,000, but in the past 3 weeks it has gone down to 50,000. The executives at my company consider Alexa Rank as a major growth indicator.

Traffic has plateaued/minute increase over the past 3 weeks. Though, I am continuously addressing avenues for SEO on the website, we are seeing a downward trend.

Question is that is Alexa a good representation of growth?

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    From my opinion, today the Alexa Rank is so meaningless. To prove the website grows, analyze the traffic instead. Please explain this to your executives because they are apparently not SEO experts.
    – Zistoloen
    Jun 30, 2016 at 11:21
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    I explain why Alexa is junk here: webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/58602/…
    – closetnoc
    Jun 30, 2016 at 12:44
  • Thanks @closetnoc...Your answer and article really gave me much needed clarity. There is one thing I want to ask is that Alexa claim that "Alexa’s traffic panel is based on millions of people using over 25,000 different browser extensions that appeal to a wide audience." What are those 25,000 different browser extensions apart from the Alexa toolbar extension.
    – HBalyan
    Jun 30, 2016 at 18:49
  • @HBalyan The browser extension did not exist in any numbers (at least) back when I wrote the original answer. Still, it is a self-selective audience and the fact that Alexa cannot know the population not represented makes it completely impossible to extrapolate proper sample data from a statistical analysis perspective. In otherwords, it is impossible for Alexa to represent traffic metrics to a site since they do not know what they do not know. No-one can know your traffic external to your website. It is just not possible. Not without sampling from everyone.
    – closetnoc
    Jul 1, 2016 at 0:27
  • quantcast may be more useful
    – noɥʇʎԀʎzɐɹƆ
    Jul 1, 2016 at 0:51

4 Answers 4

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We talked about Alexa here on Webmasters a lot.

Alexa is useless and relies on users using their toolbar. It has junk metrics and unreliable data.

I advise you not to consider Alexa ranking in any terms. Still, I'm not sure why do people use it, it's total gibberish.

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  • But what could be an alternative to measure competitive rank or some other parameter in the market. Traffic to my website can be measured using analytics tools like Google Analytics but how can one know something relative to market. Any suggestions are most welcome.
    – HBalyan
    Jun 30, 2016 at 9:55
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    They make claims like in blog.alexa.com/top-6-myths-about-the-alexa-traffic-rank that it is not biased to the Alexa Toolbar
    – HBalyan
    Jun 30, 2016 at 10:03
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    @HBalyan It is absolutely impossible for Alexa NOT to be biased. It is simply SA (statistical analysis) 101 day one stuff. See my linked answer under your question. It explains a lot.
    – closetnoc
    Jun 30, 2016 at 12:49
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Short answer: Definitely no.

Alexa a very bad representation of growth especially for small sites. We run a couple of sites and the numbers are way off especially when the traffic is low.

Like the executives in your company, there are a lot of people who want easy metrics to gauge (as opposed to "correct metric") and hence the popularity of Alexa. Alexa data is easily available but not correct. Ignore it

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Alexa rank is the worst representation of growth in terms of SEO

Alexa rank is the best representation of the growth in usage of the Alexa toolbar.

Your website's rank in Alexa is determined by the number of users browsing your website with the Alexa toolbar installed in their browser. When it comes to SEO, it means nothing.

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No Alexa is not a good representation of growth. it just a tool that will show you a no. that is according to the only alexa terms so if the alexa ranking is falling then you don't have to worry about it because this will never harm your website search appearance, traffic and keyword ranking.

I also have a website and i have try almost everything but the alexa no. is not stable so you just focus on your seo work don't worry about alexa.

and if you want to update your alexa ranking so do one thing update your blog continuously and also update something about alexa in your blog as well as post website links on alexa forums

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