Originally Posted by
Stripers&Strippers
...being in the IT field and a consultant to businesses who are looking to increase site traffic, I must tell you that the Alexa rankings are a joke and not indicative of reall traffic since the numbers are easily and often times readily manipulated, many times by the site owners themselves. Not saying that is happening here, but in all reality, there are better traffic ranking sites out there.
I commend you for your passion and all but...how can you possibly compare communities using Alexa rankings? Anyone who knows anything about the internet and internet ranking, knows Alexa is a complete JOKE! Those numbers are so
ridiculously skewed it isn't funny! Not to mention the fact that crafty webmasters make a living out of manipulating those numbers. Yes, Alexa's traffic rankings are very easily manipulated!
One of the things you failed to mention while pointing out the various sites and their Alexa rankings (joke). You never mentioned the fact that Alexa (joke) gathers it's rankings from users who have the Alexa Toolbar installed. If you don't have the toolbar installed, your visits don't count.
The whole Alexa ranking thing is a complete JOKE!
Here is an informative article by a guy named, Loren Barker. The article is titled: Alexa: Worthless & Easy To Manipulate Here is a quote from the article:
Do a Google search on "how to manipulate alexa." You'll find page, after page, after page, on how easy it is to manipulate Alexa rankings.
When it comes to online communities & want to get a feel for a websites traffic, the numbers are right in front of your face; views, replies and daily active topics are the things people in the know look for (i.e potential advertisers).
For example, a lot of guys like, Canyon Runner, Kilsong, and Over Under Adventures post duplicate reports on several sites, often times at the same time or within a few minutes of each other. By comparing the number of views, you can get a good gauge on a communities traffic.
Another thing to look at, most online communities run the same vBulletin software. Click on "Quick Links" in the upper right corner of the messageboard. From there click on "Today's Active Posts." This will give you the number of active topics for a 24hr period. You will need to be logged in to see the links.
This is another easy way to determine a communities
traffic/activity. Sites with a high number of daily active topics are usually those with the most traffic. Makes sense, don't it? To me it makes a lot more sense then using some ridiculous Alexa rankings.
I will give you another example of how big a joke Alexa rankings are. I'm looking at the sites you mentioned; SFC, Tidalfish, Bloody Decks, In The Bite and the Bass Barn. Of the 5, the Bass BARN had the worse Alexa ranking of them
all, coming in at 21,820,947.
Yet when I visited these sites you mentioned, the Bass Barn has more views/replies on duplicate posts, and more daily active topics then all of them. HOw can a site ranked 21,820,947 by Alexa, double, triple and sometimes
quadruple sites ranked, 105,261, 158,031, 135,710, 1,675,985 in these areas? It's because Alexa rankings are a joke!
If you're wondering why people choose to advertise at the bassbarn or any other site named, why don't you ask some of them? The last time I checked they had a long list of supporters, all very easy to contact. I doubt they're going tell you their support has anyting to do with Alexa.
Just my $0.02 on Alexa.
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You guy's are doin a good job here. Only site I spend anytime on, or participate in, say's something! Frank
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..polls, rankings may not be accurate but they sure do give an "indication" of what the hearbeat of a site is..skewed or not...they are representative of "activity" and the #1 ranking SFC has is important to us and im sure all others who advertise here.
the sites are clearly...
