Google PR or Alexa rank: which is more precise?

[ric_harris]

Hi,

Trying to learn about all this stuff, i start comparing Alexa rankings with google Page Rank and there are many differences.

Per example see this:

http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Shareware/Windows/

Now, the sites are listed by rank accordiong to google. But if i revew the Alexa's Rank for the firts 10 or 20 sites i see many BIG variations.

I know that the concept of PR is maybe different, but finally PR is some kind of rank.

Then maybe the Google directory its not orderer by real popularity of sites or Alexa's results are not very precise?

Thanks in advance for your point of view.

ps: im lookinf finally for traffic in my site, my question goes there: does i must believe more google PR or alexa ranks about my site?

[qwerty]

Google's PageRank is just an indication of how many pages link to a particular page, how popular those pages are, and how many links out those pages have.

What Alexa displays is traffic information, but it's only based on the surfing habits of those people who have the Alexa toolbar installed on their browser. As such, the data is pretty skewed toward webmaster stuff.

So neither of those two is really a very good indication of traffic.

[polarmate]

For traffic on your own site, look at your logs. They will tell you everything you need to know viz:
which search engine was used
which keyword phrase was used in the search
which part of the world they are in
their trail through your site
how long visitors remain on your site
how many pages are viewed on an average
etc etc
You need to have referrers turned on in your logs to be able to see most of this info.

[ric_harris]

Originally posted by polarmate
For traffic on your own site, look at your logs. They will tell you everything you need to know viz:
which search engine was used
which keyword phrase was used in the search
which part of the world they are in
their trail through your site
how long visitors remain on your site
how many pages are viewed on an average
etc etc
You need to have referrers turned on in your logs to be able to see most of this info.

Yes i know.

But i was wondering about my competitors, in fact for the 'subject' or category of my site.
I want to know who is making it really good and then try to learn.

Thanks

[qwerty]

But i was wondering about my competitors
If that's the case, unless you've got access to their logs, I suppose the Alexa information should be somewhat helpful.

As long as you keep in mind that the data you're looking at is not a representative sample of all internet users, you'll at least be able to see who's doing better on a few categories than others within the group of people who supply data to Alexa.

Another thing you can do is check backlinks on your competitors by doing link: queries on SEs. You may be able to get links from some of those sites too.

[ric_harris]

Thanks

[Bernard]

Here is some previous discussion about Alexa rankings:

http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9829&perpage=10&highlight=alexa%20bias&pagenumber=3

[qwerty]

Yup, the crux of that discussion is that information from Alexa is very skewed. When you compare the Alexa data between two or more sites, it's very important to keep that in mind. I hope ric_harris understands that, because I wouldn't want my advice to be misconstrued :)

[bwelford]

I agree, it's important to compare like with like.

However if you compare only with your direct competitors for the market niche you are targeting, then I think you can learn something. For these direct competitors, I look at Google PageRank and number of backlinks, the number of backlinks in AllTheWeb and the Alexa traffic rating. They're all very round numbers. However it gives you a crude indicator on whether you are doing better or worse than the people you need to be watching.

Barry Welford