Did you know each Entrecard dashboard has it’s own unique Alexa rank? For example turnipofpower.com’s dashboard has an Alexa rank of 1,701,380. Tech.turnipofpower.com’s dashboard has a rank of 2,136,482, and another site I own has a rank of 8,994,372. Entrecard itself has an Alexa rank of 2,672. Why does this interest me?
I log into each dashboard daily using firefox with the Sparky Alexa Toolbar, but log into my Turnip account a little more often. I’m the only person that ever visits my dashboard. That means one of the biggest contributors to your Alexa Rank is yourself, if you are using the Alexa toolbar. Old news, but I thought this behavior was fixed after Alexa killed all those links using the redirect trick. For those concerned with your Alexa rank, install the toolbar and make your blog your homepage. You should see a gradual improvement in your rank without resorting to any blackhat tricks. If you use firefox for dropping, you improve everyone’s Alexa rank too!
Imp, I agree, other than Project Wonderful Stats, I know of no other method to accurately track a site’s traffic. You need to record unique visitors and page views. However PW manages it, Entrecard should do the same. After all, page views for ads are what we are after. Nobody is including my entrecard ad in an RSS feed, so why even count that stat?
Nice write up, hopefully more Turnip readers will install the Alexa Tool Bar now if they haven’t already.
If Project Wonderful can track unique page views, then I suppose Graham, Phirate @ EntreCard can do the same too?
By the way, about Alexa Ranking, did anyone notice a plunge (bad, rank scores going higher) in most EntreCarders Alexa Rank yesterday?
Deimos, Installing the Alexa bar benefits everyone. If only it would favorite me on technorati and drop entrecards too.
Project wonderful uses simple javascript to count pageviews. I’m sure entrecard could do it, but if it’s not coded to do that, it may slow the system down.
I received a huge entrecard plunge the other day. Saphrym receive one the day after. My theory is Alexa modifies data after the fact. It sees where you visited, then counts certain votes as less important. So one day it counts all turnips votes as 1 visit = 1 unique. The next day it decides I visit some sites too often, and it counts my votes as worth only half. This makes sense because I tend to have the same number of readers daily. The fact that my entrecard value stays steady too, means I get the same droppers everyday. The only inconsistancy are visits I receive from stumbles. Stumblers cause a huge jump in Alexa rank.
great research – I had noticed that as well and I was thoroughly confused. Now i’m happy to know.