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Since the regular use of internet started, websites came along from around mid-nineties. Currently there are over 100 million website addresses. It includes big and small websites, personal blogs, home pages, etc.
With the increasing use of websites, it has become necessary to differentiate between different websites, based on various parameters. One of the parameters is the web traffic rankings. It defines how good is the website to attract unique visitors (with distinct computer IDs, as opposed to repeat visitors) visits per day, per month or per year. It also includes average time spent on the site by each visitor, visitor’s profile, number of times of visits/day, etc. Usually, better the traffic rank, the better the website appear in Google Search. Google Page Ranking also depends upon other parameters such as, how the site is linked to (or referred to) in other websites, how the user picks the site during Search, etc. The advertisers are also attracted towards websites with higher (better) traffic rankings.
Alexa's traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users and data collected from other, diverse sources over a rolling 3 month period. A site's ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and page views. Reach is determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day. Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single page view. The site with the highest combination of users and page views is ranked #1.
Below please find snapshots of our website www.itbhuglobal.org on Alexa.com site rankings. It shows 1 week, 1 month and 3 month traffic rankings. The 3 month data are less volatile and hence more reliable. Thus our 3 month traffic rank is 775,691. It is easier to jump at the bottom, (say from the 5 million to 1 million rank) but increasingly difficult as one climbs higher (say from 500,000 to 100,000) as the top is always crowded.
What is the significance of traffic ranking numbers?
10 million + = It includes many small websites (personal blogs) where the author talks only about his pet cat or his great alma-matar, with very low traffic rankings.
1 million = Any site with less than this ranking is supposed to be fairly active.
500,000 = Below this number, the site is attractive to online advertisers, such as Google Ad-Sense
200,000 = Respectable website with lots of interested readers.
20,000 = Very active site with lots of articles linked/referred to by other website
1,000 = The site with international traffic and millions of viewers
Examples of some news media/information websites with (3 month average) rankings (lower the number, the better the traffic and website):
#1 Google www.google.com
# 73 Rediff.com www.rediff.com
# 2,962 The Hindustan Times newspaper (www.hindustantimes.com)
#18,364 The Outlook India weekly newsmagazine (www.outlookindia.com)
# 78,520 Harvard Crimson campus newspaper (www.thecrimson.com)
# 398,441 Nanopolitan Blog (www.nanopolitanblogspot.com)
# 775,691 The IT-BHU Chronicle (www.itbhuglobal.org)
#27,444,263 My Voice Through My Words-personal blog (amit414voice.blogspot.com)
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There are other websites for traffic ranking, but alexa.com is considered as gold standard for traffic measurement. The site gives consistent and reasonably accurate information about traffic patterns. These rankings are generally consistent with the amount of traffic they have. This is one of the most accurate freely available tools to find out how well your site ranks up against millions of other sites on the Web.
There are other websites available for free web traffic monitoring, such as Quantcast (www.quantcast.com). Some websites recommend using their accelerator tool bar to be installed on user’s website to measure or to increase traffic data. You can find our traffic ranking of any website, by entering its web address alexa.com
Traffic Ranking of www.itbhuglobal.org as on Thursday April 28, 2009
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Additional links:
Alexa website:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexa_Internet
Web traffic in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_traffic
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(if you having troubles, try posting your comment on this page or send an email to chronicle @ itbhuglobal.org)Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University
Varanasi 221005, UP