Does Alexa ranking consider unique visitor only?

[LauraHT]

The traffic of my website has been dropping since 2 months ago while I am seeing the Alexa ranking is increasing

I know some of our staff need to visit our website( home page and some other front pages) daily to handle some data gathering. But they are from a same ip/office. Would this become a factor of this Alexa ranking result?

[William.Lau]

Don't give too much weight in Alexa, Compete, Quantcast. They all measure in different ways and Alexa in specific although widely used, is only for those who have a toolbar.

The reason why your traffic is dropping and Alexa is rising, could be because you are pointing webmasters and other related users like SEO agents to your site. A lot of webmasters have wide range of toolbars and they are likely to give Alexa rankings lower.

If you visit webmaster sites, you will notice their Alexa ranking is easily lower, but doesn't mean they get lots of traffic.

Bottom line is don't pay too much attention to these stats as they are not accurate.

[LauraHT]

Thanks for your info. what is the best tools to evaluate a site's traffic then? I am using this info to decide if I want to advertise with them sometime. Thanks.

[MagicDude4Eva]

Don't look at Alexa, especially if the website is not certified (i.e. has the Alexa tracking code installed). Even if a site is certified and has the tracking code installed, the traffic (both PV and visitors) is hugely underreported.

Almost all their stats are still some guesswork and fluctuate. Remember that Alexa will only track traffic if the toolbar is installed and it will use the JS tracking code to for additional metrics. You will typically find that only techies will run Alexa.

I would do perhaps competitive comparisons (if this is what you are looking for) with Google Trends, SeoMoz or any of the other tools, but in most cases it will still be guess work as your competitors will not openly share information. Another means is Google Adwords.

I consider Alexa a nice "vanity" rank and good for marketing purposes - i.e. "We are #5 on Alexa" - it means really nothing and has no impact on PVs, revenue etc.

[LauraHT]

Thanks for your info!

[MagicDude4Eva]

BTW: If you want to advertise with someone I would do the following:

• Get them to share key traffic and demographic figures (Google Analytics)
• Track their campaigns and click-throughs - use the Google URL Builder to build your destination campaigns, you will then be able to analyse in your GA account how your external campaigns perform.
• Generally websites accepting advertisers have inflated rate-cards and inflate their traffic. I would compare their CPM with for example running similar campaigns through Google Adwords (you might get more value from Adwords)
• I would also base your payment on performance - don't work on impressions or clicks, try and work on conversions - i.e. you pay nothing for impression/click but you pay a conversion rate - i.e. 10 USD for a user registration or xx % of revenue for any referred transaction.
• Be careful with paying for registrations (especially those not resulting in revenue), many sites will drive lots of signups to you but no actual revenue.