If you are anywhere in field of web development then you might have heard about alexa traffic rank. Ever wondered what is alexa and how it works? How to boost your alexa traffic rank? Here are few facts about Alexa.
What is Alexa ?
Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com which provides commercial web traffic data. Founded as an independent company in 1996, Alexa was acquired by Amazon in 1999. Its toolbar collects data on browsing behavior and transmits it to the Alexa website, where it is stored and analyzed, forming the basis for the company’s web traffic reporting. As of 2013, Alexa provides traffic data, global rankings and other information on 30 million websites,and its website is visited by over 10 million people monthly.
What Alexa do ?
Alexa analyzes web usage from traffic data sources including their own Alexa Toolbar users to eventually create traffic rankings for websites. This essentially determines how popular a website is. Even though these scores are highly respected in certain circles, the traffic data isn’t a representative sample of the global internet population, but an extensive variety of statistics taken from Alexa Toolbar users.
What is Alexa traffic rank ?
The Alexa traffic rank is taken over three months from traffic data of millions of users taking into consideration both the number of users who visit that site and the number of pages which are viewed by that user. So this score can change quarterly depending on the views/visits at that time. A lower Alexa number means a greater level of traffic.
How Alexa traffic rank works ?
The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on a value derived from these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). The three-month change is determined by comparing the site’s current rank with its rank from three months ago. For example, on July 1, the three-month change would show the difference between the rank based on traffic during the first quarter of the year and the rank based on traffic during the second quarter.
What is the Alexa toolbar ?
This is a free tool which you can download that allows you to measure your own traffic and rankings and check out your competitors ranking. How to download and install the Alexa tool bar is very simple.
Go to Alexa.com/Toolbar to download the free toolbar for Firefox, Chrome and IE.
This tool bar then shows you two rankings – a rank for the world and a rank for your country.
This extention is useful because it also gives you a link for search analytics and way back machine link to see view past performances and also the average load time, this compare you to other sites to see how fast your site is loading right there on your toolbar.
Toolbar Features:
- Traffic Stats
- Search Analytics
- Audience
- Contact Info
- Reviews
- Related Links
- Clickstream
