alexa site ranking ranking, useful or random?

[adamout]

I have a site which is fairly new but its getting more and more traffic (still not a huge amount tho)

Its ranked 56,205 on alexa - this seems a little too good for the traffic I actually get.

How are these stats generated? They seem pretty random or am I totally wrong and they are useful?

 

[NovumDominus]

You can roughly estimate some traffics stats from the rank.

Doesn't mean the traffic was/is real though.

I'm not sure about their calculation, but I do know that the amount of traffic plays a big part of it.

 

[GhostPanda]

I would never put to much weight behind what rank you are currently sitting under, I have sites with similar amounts of monthly traffic but varied rank's on alexa.
Put more weight behind the demographics and Audience geography of those actually viewing your site, are these people the best to be viewing it and if so will they be likely to share your site with others in there area/age groups.

Along with this measure how long are they staying on your site, are they bouncing after a few seconds or staying for a good few minutes to read your content. Increasing the duration of users browsing your site will increase your value in Googles eyes, much the same way that people watching Youtube videos right to the end increases its popularity and value.

 

[meln]

They're definitely not random but they're also not that useful. Much/most/all(?) of their stats come from people using their browser toolbar, so it's going to be naturally skewed towards certain people, namely: 1) webmasters who want to check traffic rankings, 2) people who are clueless enough to install toolbars. If your website caters to one of these demographics your ranking will probably be above average for that traffic level.

 

[adamout]

They're definitely not random but they're also not that useful. Much/most/all(?) of their stats come from people using their browser toolbar, so it's going to be naturally skewed towards certain people, namely: 1) webmasters who want to check traffic rankings, 2) people who are clueless enough to install toolbars. If your website caters to one of these demographics your ranking will probably be above average for that traffic level.

Its a serp checker so the main demographic is webmasters. That explains the higher reported ranking, as the users are more likely to have the toolbar installed.

Great answer, I would never have figured that out! - It seemed very strange that I was ranked so highly for only a medium traffic volume!

Thanks

 

[PerryThresher]

I have a site which is fairly new but its getting more and more traffic (still not a huge amount tho)

Its ranked 56,205 on alexa - this seems a little too good for the traffic I actually get.

How are these stats generated? They seem pretty random or am I totally wrong and they are useful?

There are too many ways to artificially raise this coefficient. I do not really trust it.