Our Alexa rating is rissing steadily !

[adruml]

Yeah adrumi, you and bykimbo and PetBazaar all have valid points (in my mind).
It would be nice to have answers to the questions you've raised, but how that can be achieved is out of my depth, and there's no doubt ways to get the answers using something more reliable than this alexa approach.... but how ??? Don't know - sorry.

Unfortunately I have no clue how it all works. Probably the best we can all do is just take a few moments out of our day and pretend we are a new visitor to the site. Starting from all searches not just Google and see if it takes us where we as members believe the searches should take us and if we are comfortable with where it takes us and what we see.
I have just seen too many posts in the Forum in regards to number of views vs number of sales. There appears to be a concern visitors may not be comfortable with what they are viewing or they don't feel it's easy enough to buy here. Putting sales and views aside I pretty much sell a unique item in my repaired/modified cymbals and what I find rather strange is since listing my cymbals here since September 2010 I have not recieved 1 single question. That is very strange as I recieve at least 25 questions per week on the same items listed elsewhere which leads me to believe something is wrong and we may find out what it is through our own individual research to the ebid site and how to get there.

[Juliebabe25]

This is a great debate!

Firstly, as regards Alexa being "accurate"
Alexa has been going for years, it gets its figures from the views of people who have installed the Alexa Toolbar on their website.

I have had the Alexa toolbar on my website for about 2 years.
Its great, because it then allows you to see the Alexa rating of any other site that you visit.
That way I can tell that if a site has a rating of say 1,000 that it is quite popular
If it has a rating of say 2 million, then it is not very popular.

If anyone wants to put the Alexa toolbar on their website, just go to their website www.Alexa.com and download their toolbar. Its only a tiny toolbar that appears in your status bar.

There is no spyware etc and it will not slow your machine down.

[emporiumdays]

Yeah Julie, when I took bykimbo's advice and googled "how accurate is alexa", apart from finding numerous comments about its questionable accuracy, I also found some favourable comments too - like this one:

We also find in general, Alexa correlates well with our own traffic levels. Recently, one of our sites went on a nice 3 month increase in traffic due to better PR and improved serps. Alexa also reflected this growth within 4%. The absolute numbers were not right but the relative growth numbers were close.

This sort of supports PetBazzar's view earlier when he said:

......."I reckon though that for identifying trends and peculiarities like the 20% landing on helpdesk it's probably reasonably usefull.
I know it all relies on the Alexa toolbar user, but you would have to hope that they are at least vaguely representative of web users in general and so the figures should scale up albeit losing accuracy as they go."

I'm tempeted to get that toolbar - but I'm not sure........

[Juliebabe25]

I have been on Alexa for 2 years, and when ever I give it a plug people come on say its not accurate or they don't know how it works.
Just like there are we hate Paypal websites.
Yet we all know that basically Paypal works and is good.

I use Alexa to watch trends and I am sure it is fairly good at showing those trends.

There are two other similar sites.
Quantcast and Compete.

I am not sure how Quantcast works but Compete asks people too be a sample users (just like Neilsen's do)
Big companies pay Compete for their detailed results so they know where to advertise.

And the things is that all three show roughly similar results and tends.

@Emporiumdays

Steve if you do a lot of surfing on websites, you will love the Alex tool bar.

[Juliebabe25]

@PetBazaar

Glad to see someone who is really analytical

I don't understand a lot of what you said. But it was impressive.

But today I think I have found the answer to your main query.

Why is the Ebid help page rated so highly. (and I promise Tony, its not me going into the help page I've only used it once or twice)

As you know I am in New Zealand, and you will need to do your own search.....

But I went into Google.
Typed in ebid (just ebid nothing else) and pressed Enter.

The first two results gave ebid.net (in the green url)
The third result was ebid.net/buy

The fourth result was ebid.net/help
And for this entry it said "Visit ebid New Zealand the Online Auction house without the ....."

So I wonder if you get the same sort of search result with Google UK and USA ?

The results after that tend to be Wikipedia and forums posts etc etc

[bykimbo]

[COLOR=Blue][B][SIZE=3]Yeah Julie, when I took bykimbo's advice and googled "how accurate is alexa", apart from finding numerous comments about its questionable accuracy, I also found some favourable comments too - like this one

That's why I suggest you look. There are many views either way, and in order to make an informed choice you need to see them. I don't have an axe to grind here! There isn't some anti-Alexa consipiracy group paying me big bucks into a Swiss account <-- hint, in case anybody's thinking of it, I'm pretty cheap, they wouldn't need to be that big. My personal view is, I'm not sufficiently convinced of Alexa's worth to justify putting work in to improve its results. I think it's too easily biased by the tool-bar owner's preferences. But it's just my view, and it didn't get as popular as it is by being completely rubbish!

[emporiumdays]

Yeah, thanks Julie - I've only just 'caught up' with things (I've been out today), but I actually installed the little alexa graph/bar on my status bar, before I went out. Like you say it doesn't slow your PC and it's out of the way. Yes, it just brings up the 'Rating Number' as well as a tiny graph showing the site's 'trend' for the last 6 months. It's a neat little program!

Yeah - and I understand your personal view too bykimbo, (I know you're not being paid by an anti-alexa group! - ha - nice one) .... but anyway, I've got the app now, and well, I do like gadget thingys - so now I guess I've got another one to play with!
(I'd just like to say 'hello' to you bykimbo - you're a storehouse of knowledge, I see you've been on eBid since mid 2004 ! - terrific).

And I still think adrumi has some good questions like,

I have just seen too many posts in the Forum in regards to number of views vs number of sales. There appears to be a concern visitors may not be comfortable with what they are viewing or they don't feel it's easy enough to buy here.

It may take some real clever nutting out to get the answers though....

[Juliebabe25]

Great news, our Alexa rating just went to 10,966.

As I say, its been rising steadily over the last 6 months and that's the first time its been under 11,000.

I think it confirms the fact that ebid is really gaining ground, especially in the USA, one of the major alts has been losing listings for the last few months, whereas ebid will soon overtake them.

Don't forget if anyone else wants to get the Alexa toolbar its free and its very interesting, as Steve above confirms.


@Emporiumdays glad you like the Alexa tool bar

[PetBazaar]

Don't take those figures too seriously, follow the trend not the results in any one day.

In the last month alone, eBid's Alexa rating has been as high as 9,000 (approx) and as low as 14,000 (approx). During December it dipped below 16,000 on two occasions, and to around 9,500 on three. Don't get too excited at the figures in any single day, it's the gradual upward trend that's the important bit.

Also look at the trends for "Time on Site" and "Bounce %" - you want the first to be rising and the second to be falling as that indicates that more people are visiting and browsing, rather than leaving after the viewing the first page.

[DZAMBO]

I just wait after ‘’Alexa’’ hit 0,001 and I will visit this page…’’babe’’ get busy keep posted Dzambo…heh…