Understanding Alexa

by Lyn Leckie-Matassa ~ June 15th, 2008. Filed under: Traffic.

I have taken a screen shot of my own Alexa traffic details. You can see the chart is broken up into Reach for MoneyHomeBiz .com, Page Views for MoneyHomeBiz.com and Traffic Rank for MoneyHomeBiz.com.

What does all this mean well I have Taken this excerpt from http://www.alexa.com/site/help/traffic_learn_more#reach

What is Reach?

Reach measures the number of users. Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. So, for example, if a site like yahoo.com has a reach of 28%, this means that of all global Internet users measured by Alexa, 28% of them visit yahoo.com. Alexa’s one-week and three-month average reach are measures of daily reach, averaged over the specified time period. The three-month change is determined by comparing a site’s current reach with its values from three months ago.

What are Page Views?

Page views measure the number of pages viewed by site visitors. Multiple page views of the same page made by the same user on the same day are counted only once. The page views per user numbers are the average numbers of unique pages viewed per user per day by the visitors to the site. The three-month change is determined by comparing a site’s current page view numbers with those from three months ago.

How Are Traffic Trend Graphs Calculated?

The Trend graph shows you a three-day moving average of the site’s daily traffic rank, charted over time. The daily traffic rank reflects the traffic to the site based on data for a single day. In contrast, the main traffic rank shown in the Alexa Toolbar and elsewhere in the service is calculated from three months of aggregate traffic data.

Daily traffic rankings will sometimes benefit sites with sporadically high traffic, while the three-month traffic ranking benefits sites with consistent traffic over time. Since we feel that consistent traffic is a better indication of a site’s value, we’ve chosen to use the three-month traffic rank to represent the site’s overall popularity. We use the daily traffic rank in the Trend graphs because it allows you to see short-term fluctuations in traffic much more clearly.

It is possible for a site’s three-month traffic rank to be higher than any single daily rank shown in the Trend graph. On any given day there may be many sites that temporarily shoot up in the rankings. But if a site has consistent traffic performance, it may end up with the best ranking when the traffic data are aggregated into the three-month average. A good analogy is a four-day golf tournament: if a different player comes in first at each match, but you come in second at all four matches, you can end up winning the tournament.

I have spent a lot of time on my site over the past few months and it is really starting to pay off. I am exceptionally happy with the page views per user it means that when people come to my site they are viewing at least 10 pages on average each which to me is astounding. There is a direct correlation between keeping your site updated with fresh content and the number of visitors to your site. I try to make a post every day and over the past 2 weeks have posted several times a day, my goal is to post an average of 3 times a day and only once a day on weekends.

Popularity: 34% [?]

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