The Biblioblog Top 50 uses the Alexa traffic rankings for our fun monthly contest, and after three months of steadily dropping. I thought that it was because I had changed my them to a a rather unfriendly one – but that doesn’t seem to be it. I also watch my stats on Google – and it actually seems to be going up according to unique visitors, which is cool.
So, does anyone else know what is going on with Alexa? Has anyone else experienced this problem?
August 21st, 2009 11:07 pm
Your theme won’t make any difference. It’s the content. The theme just dresses it up. Since all the WP sites are built on basic content with CSS for themes, Google should, as far as I know, see your site the same no matter the theme. Unless the theme keeps your site from showing certain information. If you use the SEO plugin that’s even better.
I have no idea how Alexa works.
Jeff
August 22nd, 2009 11:21 am
I’m not an expert on Alexa, but it would seem that if traffic is also picking up webwide, then even if your traffic is increasing, if it is not increasing at a slower rate relative to the other Alexa sites, there could still be a drop. I may be misunderstanding how Alexa works, and if I am, then disregard this completely.
August 22nd, 2009 1:29 pm
I noticed that Dr Jim West’s rating is about the same as far as I can remember and mine is from over a million (I think) to about 700k. So I don’t know what’s going on.
Jeff
August 24th, 2009 3:51 pm
Well, if you drop dramatically in the rankings, I will sign your protest papers.
August 21st, 2009 11:17 pm
I know that old theme started to mess with my WP-Stats plugin, and I know that sometimes it fails to read the SEO plugin, but you are right – I don’t think it should hurt Alexa, since Alexa is really about hits. It is rising very fast, and which is the opposite of what I am seeing in Wp-Stats and Google.
Alexa, unfortunately, cannot be contacted, so I’ll wait and see it if the problem fixes itself.
From what I can tell, no one knows how Alexa works
even Alexa.
August 22nd, 2009 11:23 am
Peter, I don’t know if that’s it. I noticed that my Search Engine number is 0 – which is odd, because I am getting a lot from search engines. That number is only for this week, though, the week when everything died.
August 22nd, 2009 1:38 pm
I looked on the forums, and they say it happens ’sometimes’ The key, to me anyway, that something might be up, is that my Search engine percetnage is 0 – which is odd, because my search engine traffic is growing. Granted, traffic ranking is not where’s it at, but for our fun little contest, it does seem to matter.
Maybe it will catch up soon.
August 24th, 2009 4:11 pm
Thank you, kindly