Google PageRank and Alexa Traffic Ranking Explained
July 2nd, 2007 | 35 commentsHere is something that’s always misunderstood – Website Ranking!
I won’t pretend to know exactly what’s going on at Google or Alexa but I will tell you what I do know about the ranking systems and it goes like this:
Google PageRank (PR)
There are two types of Google PR, “toolbar PR” and the actual PR that is given to each site. Actually, they are not two different “types” of PR, let me explain…
The Google Toolbar PR is what we see in the Google Toolbar, if you have it installed and enabled, that shows a reading of that particular pages rank, as seen by Google. This is supposedly a reading of the actual PR and it’s updated roughly every 3 months or so. (Updates normally take place every 2 to 4 months.) However, it isn’t an accurate reading of a sites authority on a page by page basis in most cases, although it can be useful when looking at the average toolbar pagerank of a range of pages!
The actual PR is updated very frequently. I couldn’t begin to tell you exactly when it’s updated, nor could anyone else other than a select few at Google, but it’s updated much more frequently than the toolbar PR.
Many new marketers believe that when the toolbar PR updates their sites will either gain visitors or lose visitors. This is simply not true.
The only update that Google does that will increase or decrease your site visitors is their algorithm updates, which are done just about every day. The algorithm is the extremely complex formula that Google uses to rank Website pages. Also, each page within a Website is looked at, not the Website as a whole.
But, how your site pages rank once they do an algorithm update will be determined by the actual PageRank of each individual page.
Alexa Traffic Ranking
This is the ranking that is provided by Alexa.com. This is based on the actual traffic going to a Website whereas Google PR is calculated mainly by the number and quality of inbound links to a specific page and not traffic.
The ranking is done with numbers as the Website with the most traffic on the Internet (currently Yahoo) would have a traffic ranking of 1 and those with very little traffic would be in the millions.
The Alexa traffic ranking has a reputation for being inaccurate. But, generally a Website with an Alexa traffic ranking of 50,000 or less receives quite a bit of traffic.
The Alexa ranking is based off the figures they collect from those who have their toolbar installed. This is why you’ll notice many technology and Internet Marketing related sites with higher Alexa rankings. It’s another reason why it’s known to be inaccurate. However, I would look at a sites Alexa ranking as a sign of authority before I would look at a pages toolbar PR as a sign of authority.
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14th July, 2007 at 6:04 am
One thing I think that is important to mention, is where these measures are taken.
in the case of alexa rankings,
it’s only from those people having the alexa toolbar installed, wich make more tech oriented websites rate higher than “common people” oriented websites.
still, thanks for a nice article (Y)
14th July, 2007 at 2:50 pm
You’re exactly right. I forgot to mention that.
It’s very common for a travel Website, for instance, to tank much worse with Alexa then a home business or technical Website for the exact reason mention above.
Alexa bases their rankings on the traffic analyzed by their own toolbar.
In most cases the “average joe” doesn’t need to install this toolbar. Internet Marketers, bloggers and techies would be more opt to dowload the alexa toolbar so naturally these types of sites will have a higher Alexa ranking.
Thanks for that!
23rd July, 2007 at 6:10 am
[...] 3. Don’t base your opinion of a Website on it’s Google PR or Alexa Traffic rank. These systems are flawed! I won’t go into this one much since I posted about it here. [...]
5th January, 2008 at 11:41 pm
I really do not have much faith in Alexa because it is very inaccurate. Another fact is that there is no Alexa toolbar for Vista users. It is very sad that many people still make their decision based upon Alexa traffic.
6th January, 2008 at 1:23 am
It’s very inaccurate when it comes to non-tech/marketing related sites, but they’re doing better at least with taking care of ways to fake it, although it’s still possible.
7th March, 2008 at 3:07 pm
I have one of those PR/Alexa indicators in my firefox browser. For this page it says PR1 and Alexa 68,627. I wish there was
a tool bar that showed where a page ranks in the google/yahoo/msn search results.
Anyone?
7th March, 2008 at 3:11 pm
@ Victor – I don’t know of one for Firfox. You can download SearchStatus and it will display your serp rankings and a lot more stuff within the SERPS below the listing.
7th March, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Thanks Josh, I did a search for “download SearchStatus ” and it took me to a firefox plugin version. I installed it and it appears to be working fine.
18th March, 2008 at 3:16 pm
[...] If you’ve been online for more than a day, you know what Google PageRank (PR) is. You may also know that PR is calculated on a page by page basis rather than on a site by site basis as well. Many people are confused about pagerank, thinking it’s worthless. The PR that so many people say is worthless is the toolbar PR, but that’s a whole other story that I explained in a post titled Google PageRank and Alexa Ranking Explained. [...]
19th March, 2008 at 6:29 am
Squeaky – we use Vista and the firefox alexa toolbar works fine for us. (But, you’r right there’s no internet explorer toolbar for vista)
Josh – what’s the significance of Technorati ranking. Sure you can have a bunch of sites that link to you to gain authority, but in practice does it mean anything? Do people actually find blogs through technorati? (Presumably a higher authority would rank you higher in their results)
19th March, 2008 at 1:26 pm
@ Web – It’s just another rank that bloggers can look at to feel better about themselves
Although I have had a few people tell me they found my blog through technorati, it doesn’t drive much traffic at all.
21st March, 2008 at 5:15 am
I’ve written a bit about Alexa in the past but although my domain continues to grow traffic wise every month, the Alexa ranking, after regular improvement month after month has recently seen a steady decline from a shade over 100K to 168K!
I don’t worry too much about this and can only assume that the number of visitors using the toolbar has not grown in proportion to the overall number…or something :0) but it doesn’t really reflect the true traffic growth that takes place for many bloggers and webmasters.
26th May, 2008 at 4:28 pm
[...] Search queries are returned based on hundreds, possibly thousands, of different variables within Googles algorithm, but PageRank™ plays the biggest role. (To learn the difference between toolbar PR (useless) and actual Pagerank (Important) see my explanation of Google PageRank and Alexa Traffic Ranking.) [...]
2nd June, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Josh,
I for my part ignore Alexa Traffic Ranking utterly.
It’s not worth to give it any thoughts.
My PR is worthful and I had grief and despair in November when it droped from 4 to 3.
… again …
A month ago I got it back – hard work involved 8) – and you can see me smiling …
Kind regards
Rata
2nd June, 2008 at 7:04 pm
@ Rita – I’m totally opposite. Alexa Traffic Ranking, while still not 100% accurate, is more accurate than ever, while Google toolbar PR is more inaccurate than ever.
8th January, 2009 at 6:48 am
You are quite right. It is not wise to base all your decisions on Google’s PR or on Alexa numbers. One should use these as a very rough guideline.
In the case of Alexa, this only counts the visitors that have their toolbar installed on their computers and, as someone else mentioned, people like me who have Vista cannot have an Alexa toolbar installed on their PC. This makes this exercise a waste of time.
Thanks for the good post – inofrmative as usual.
Kind regards,
Barry
8th January, 2009 at 11:26 am
@Barry,
There is no reason you cannot run Alexa in your browser if you are using Firefox with Vista.
You just need the Search Status add on which is a very useful one to have and includes both Alexa & Google PR.
12th January, 2009 at 5:41 am
Thanks Josh,
)
I found your site number one on Goog and found exactly what I was looking for your explanation. Thanks for the info
26th June, 2009 at 6:24 pm
[...] is a Good Internal Linking Structure Google PR and Alexa Traffic Rank Explained The Truth about the "MMO" [...]
30th September, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Hey Josh,
Thanks for this quick explanation of Google PR and Alexa ranking.
I’ve been watching my Alexa ranking starting to drop like a rock and thought it’d be nice to understand why the heck it’s doing that!
As I’m an internet marketer, it makes total sense why it’d drop faster than most sites. Inaccuracies or not, it does seem like a really good metric a site’s authority.
Thanks again,
Joe
PS – It looks like you’re rocking with the Alexa ranking with 37,189!
2nd October, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Hey Josh,
I know the Alexa ranking is not totally accurate but at least it’s a guideline to follow. If it were completely useless I don’t think a site as big as Alexa would bother to keep the ranking system in place.
I’m involved with a group of people that are having a friendly competition to see who can get their Alexa ranking the lowest. If anything it gives us something to talk about and we’re having fun doing it.
Later,
Jeff Sargent
12th October, 2009 at 5:12 am
Thanks for the overview of these confusing tools on the internet. I’ve never been sure if these tools actually calculated accurate statistics or not.
In any case, It’s still fun to check rankings and see how websites size up with one another.
30th October, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Reading all the comments makes me less upset about the fact that even though our traffic is better than it has ever been and other ranking systems have us doing better and better, Alexa continues to treat us like a psycho ex. with schizophrenic tendencies.
I have the toolbar installed and suddenly it shows “no rank” for any and all other sites including my own.
And this week was our best traffic ever (quantcast, google analytics & our own logging system) but it shows us taking a huge dive this week.
It is such an inaccurate tool and yet it’s still got clout. So I think I should do what the rest of you are doing and just ignore it.
Have any of you had the issue with no rank showing on the toolbar?
Thanks!
Karen
6th December, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Although written over 2 years ago, this article is still appropriate. I too have seen that our Alexa rank shoots up and down without regard to the actual website traffic. And no it’s not just a time lag between Alex and our Apache logs.
So why is Alex even used these days?
8th December, 2009 at 9:32 am
I found your site #1 when searching for a no techy explanation of Alexa & PR.
I don’t care how they are calculated. No. Not bothered in the slightest. Credibility comes from numbers of people who use them.
I do care that they are used with authority as a **rough** guideline by many many people including a large number of article marketers (looks like thats your expertise too)
12th February, 2010 at 2:16 pm
[...] Google PageRank and Alexa Traffic Ranking Explained: Confused about the difference between Google PageRank and Alexa? Read this short and sweet post. [...]
20th February, 2010 at 5:43 pm
I still dont understand is a high number good. Or a low meaning #1 is the best it gets.
Which way is this scale weighted?
28th February, 2010 at 11:57 am
Great post yeah article was written a while ago but its still very relevant. I value both Google page rank, and Alexa although both can be flawed in their own ways there the closest things out there for understanding a websites importance!
2nd March, 2010 at 5:41 pm
@ Bill – The lower the alexa ranking, the better.
8th April, 2010 at 3:32 pm
[...] Google PR and Alexa Traffic Rank Explained The Truth about the "MMO" Niche [...]
24th January, 2011 at 4:18 am
I actually had to install code on the site code when I put my site into Alexa.
I use more of the time on site/page views per user and bounce % #’s to track where I am at content to customer satisfaction wise.
When I first started blogging it was more like the usual 1-2 minutes, 1.2 page thing.
As we move up in rankings, what I am watching is the 7-8 pages and 17-20 mins on my site
That is a better indicator for myself – I would think advertisers would be happy that for one price they have a shot at being seen multiple times in so short a period of time.
Just my 2 cents
26th September, 2011 at 3:46 am
Will page rank increase when alexa rank drops?
26th September, 2011 at 10:08 pm
My Alexa Ranking has gone from a ranking of 6,457,554 August 29, 2011 to a ranking of 1,337,450 September 26, 2011, so in approximately 1 month (29 days to be exact) I have been posting everyday, and just started to do backlinks and social bookmarks, it has changed quickly and significantly. And, although you say that they are known to be in-accurate, I get a kick out of checking my progress on the Alexa Ranking. I think that without doing any real SEO, that I am doing fairly well. I’m looking forward to hitting the under 50,000 count. Your friend in Marketing. Ken Somerville
P.S. Any suggestions on improving my ranking would be appreciated.
27th September, 2011 at 4:39 am
So, what do you mean is to do back-link and keep posting everyday and my alexa rank would drop and my page rank would be increasing?
I need to boost my page rank up as soon as possible.
My alexa rank dropped from 6,500,000 to 3,030,062. The period of time is few days.I hope that i could be in within 100,000. Would my page rank be 1/10 page rank when the alexa rank is below 100,000 ?
24th February, 2012 at 3:31 pm
I found this to be true as well when I found that my Alexa ranking was growing, rather than shrinking–but my Google analytic’s shows my traffic increasing and more page-views, and increased time spent on site. Seems I was worried too much about Alexa, rather than focusing on Analytic’s. At least I have a better understanding of how Alexa works now. Thanks!