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Today I thought I would write about one of our newest offerings, the Alexa Site Audit. The Site Audit takes an in depth look at your website, grades it, and recommends ways to make it easier for people to find and use it. This is a project I’ve been personally involved in since the beginning, so I am especially exited today to be blogging about it.

Once your site is claimed and a report is initiated, our Site Audit crawler crawls your website. Depending on how many pages your site has, and how quickly we can fetch them, this can take up to 12 hours to perform. We then process the crawled pages, which can take several hours, and only when the report is done do we bill you. Because the process takes some time, we will send you an email when the report is complete. If you log in you may see your report as “payment pending,” don’t worry. It can sometimes take over an hour for the payment to complete, although most of the time it’s much faster.

When you click on the finished report, the first page you see is an overview with your sites’s grade and our top recommendations for improving it. The report is broken into five sections, Crawl Coverage, Reputation, Page Optimization, Keywords, and Stats. The first three sections contribute to your grade, while the last one is for anyone interested in the details of the crawl.

I’ve included screenshots of a report run on my family blog. As you can see I received a grade of “C”. Ouch. I guess I have some work to do. It looks like I need to work on getting links to my site from more popular sites, and I need to make sure I have relevant title and meta descriptions on each of my pages.

Crawl Coverage: This section of the report is about the structure of your website, and makes recommendations on how easy it is for crawlers and visitors to find pages. In the example you can see that the reachability of pages in my site is quite poor, and over two thirds of the pages were more than three clicks away from the home page. I obviously need to make sure content on my site is easier for visitors to find. I can also see if I’ve accidentally blocked any important search engines from crawling my site, how many temporary redirects were found, etc.

Reputation: The reputation of a site, at least in terms of Page Rank, is based on how many sites link it to it and what their reputations are. My blog is in the 9th percentile for inbound links, which means that 91% of sites with a similar Alexa Traffic Rank have more inbound links than my site does. I guess I really do need to work on getting other sites to link to me. Note that by default the graph in the example screen shot is hidden, but if you click on “Learn More” you will see it for your site.

Page Optimization: This section gives recommendations on how to improve the pages of your site, as opposed to the Crawl Coverage section which makes recommendations based on site structure. Here we identify things like duplicate content, which is when two or more URLs show the same “page”, pages with little text, missing image descriptions, broken links, etc. The report found two broken links on my blog, which I probably would have never found otherwise.

Keywords: This section recommends keywords to buy if you advertise your site on search engines. We also suggest words to use when linking to pages within your site. Using descriptive words in link text makes it easier for search engines to understand what the linked-to pages are about, and using popular yet relevant words will make the linked-to pages easer to find in search engines.

Stats: This section provides a short summary of the crawl of your site we performed. It includes information such as the number of pages we requested, the errors we encountered, and the unique hosts we crawled. Even if you’re not that interested in stats, I do recommend looking over the Unique Hosts Crawled. If you see any sites on the list you don’t recognize, it may mean you have some spam links somewhere on your site.

I hope this inspires you to run an Alexa Site Audit, and that you find it useful. We welcome all questions and feedback. You can post to the Alexa help forums, in the comments section here, or send an email to siteaudit@alexa.com.

Over the past months we have gotten a large number of requests for an Alexa Toolbar for the Google Chrome browser. Well, today I am happy to announce that the Alexa Traffic Rank extension for Chrome is now available to download and install! You can find it in the Chrome Extension Gallery, or by following the link above.

As you browse, the Extension icon shows you graphically the rank of the site you are visiting, and if you hover your mouse over the icon you can see the numeric Alexa Traffic Rank.

If you click on the Alexa icon, a window appears with more information about the site. You can see what the site’s rank is, approximately how many domains link to it, how well reviewed it is, as well as related sites. You can also easily browse to Alexa’s search analytics page for the site, or see what it looked like in the past at the Wayback Machine.

Another added benefit is inclusion in the Alexa Traffic Panel. This is the only Chrome Extension that includes you in our panel, and of course only if you decide you want to participate.

Over the past months we have gotten a large number of requests for an Alexa Toolbar for the Google Chrome browser. Well, today I am happy to announce that the Alexa Traffic Rank extension for Chrome is now available to download and install! You can find it in the Chrome Extension Gallery, or by following the link above.

As you browse, the Extension icon shows you graphically the rank of the site you are visiting, and if you hover your mouse over the icon you can see the numeric Alexa Traffic Rank.

If you click on the Alexa icon, a window appears with more information about the site. You can see what the site’s rank is, approximately how many domains link to it, how well reviewed it is, as well as related sites. You can also easily browse to Alexa’s search analytics page for the site, or see what it looked like in the past at the Wayback Machine.

Another added benefit is inclusion in the Alexa Traffic Panel. This is the only Chrome Extension that includes you in our panel, and of course only if you decide you want to participate.

Over the past months we have gotten a large number of requests for an Alexa Toolbar for the Google Chrome browser. Well, today I am happy to announce that the Alexa Traffic Rank extension for Chrome is now available to download and install! You can find it in the Chrome Extension Gallery, or by following the link above.

As you browse, the Extension icon shows you graphically the rank of the site you are visiting, and if you hover your mouse over the icon you can see the numeric Alexa Traffic Rank.

If you click on the Alexa icon, a window appears with more information about the site. You can see what the site’s rank is, approximately how many domains link to it, how well reviewed it is, as well as related sites. You can also easily browse to Alexa’s search analytics page for the site, or see what it looked like in the past at the Wayback Machine.

Another added benefit is inclusion in the Alexa Traffic Panel. This is the only Chrome Extension that includes you in our panel, and of course only if you decide you want to participate.

You may be familiar with Alexa’s demographics data, but if not then you’re in for an extra treat. This week we added a new “Advanced Demographics” feature that includes two new pieces of data, and allows you to easily compare the demographics of up to five sites.

For those unfamiliar, you can find Alexa’s demographics data under the “Audience” tab on most site information pages. Here you can see estimates of a website’s audience broken down by age, gender, education, whether or not they have children, and where they are browsing from. The graphs are set up so that the line down the center is the internet average. A green line to the right means the site is over-represented compared to the internet, while a red line to the right means the site is under-represented. For example, Alexa’s data shows that Facebook is under-represented by people 45 and older. So not only are there fewer people over 45 on the web compared to those under 45, but fewer still of those 45+ year olds are visiting Facebook.

In the Advanced Demographics section, we offer two new pieces of demographics data; Income and Ethnicity. That’s certainly useful, but to make it even better you can also compare the site you are interested in with up to four other sites, and across all seven demographics segments. We’ve pre-populated the comparisons with similar sites, but you can compare any set of four sites you want. You might want to compare your site to your competitors, or across multiple sites you own, or you can just have fun. Comparing the audiences of various news agencies with one another is certainly interesting, and that’s just a start.

There is one catch, however. If you want to use the Advanced Demographics tool you need to have the Alexa Toolbar installed. This is our way of thanking those who have elected to surf the web with the toolbar, and be part of the Alexa panel. The Alexa panel is the source of most of Alexa’s data, including our demographics. We have toolbars for both Firefox and Internet Explorer, and for those who browse with Chrome we hear you and hope to have an answer very soon.

So check out the Advanced Demographics and let us know what you think!

We’ve added a new optional button to the Alexa Toolbar for Firefox, the Universal Amazon Wishlist! Now if you are browsing and see a product that you want, you can add it to your Amazon Universal Wishlist without having to browse away from the page you are on. You don’t even have to be visiting amazon.com to use it. The Universal Wishlist joins the Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail notifier buttons already available for the Firefox toolbar.

Once you click on the “Add to Wish List” button, the Universal Wishlist feature will appear over the page you are currently browsing. From there you can edit the title and price of the item, indicate how many you want, select the appropriate image, leave a comment, and even decide which wishlist to add the item to. It’s easy to do, and it makes it easy for your friends and family to find the perfect gift for you. In the example shown, I am adding a dice bag from Etsy as an hint to my wife for Father’s Day.

You need the latest version (1.53) or higher of the Alexa Toolbar for Firefox to be able to install this button. If you haven’t installed a toolbar yet, the easiest thing to do is visit the toolbar install page and get one. Once the toolbar is installed and your browser has restarted, you will be given the option to install optional buttons into your toolbar as well as adjust your privacy settings.

If you have a toolbar and it hasn’t automatically updated yet, the easiest thing to do is go to Tools->Add-ons in your browser and open up the Firefox Add-ons window. From the Add-ons window you can click on “Find Updates,” and Firefox will give you the option to update all your add-ons (including the Alexa Toolbar).

What is your favorite toolbar button? What would you like to see in the future. Let us know! You can leave a comment here, or send something to @AlexaInternet or me (@wcoburn) directly on Twitter. I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

Do you have an Alexa or IMDb toolbar for Firefox installed? Do you use Gmail? Then you might want to check out our new Gmail notifier button for our Firefox toolbars. Like our Facebook and Twitter buttons, it is entirely optional. As it’s name implies, the Gmail notifier button lets you know when you have new email. The drop down menu lists the time, sender, and subject line of each unread email, making it easy to check you email without browsing away from the page you are currently viewing. It looks like right now I have 8 unread emails, I should do something about that.

You can add any of the optional buttons by clicking on “Add Buttons…” in the drop down menu next to the toolbar Logo. This menu also allows you to configure your toolbar, set the order in which the optional buttons appear in your toolbar, view the Alexa privacy policy, get some help, or take a tour.

Do you have ideas for cool toolbar features? If so, let us know!

If you use Alexa.com and you’re in the San Francisco area, then we would love to have you participate in our upcoming usability study at our office in the Presidio. Parking is free, a luxury in San Francisco, and from 10AM to 3PM there is a free shuttle between downtown San Francisco and our office in the Presidio. Test sessions are 90 minutes, and participants will receive a $50 Amazon Gift Card as a thank you.

If you are interested, please send an email to usability@alexa.com including:

• Your Name
• A phone number where you can be reached
• Company Web site URL
• Job Title\Role
• Your preference for day (Mon – Fri) and time (morning, lunch, afternoon)

The deadline to apply is this Friday (April 23).

Thanks!

Some time ago we released some new Search Analytics features, and so far the feedback has been very positive. In this blog post I thought I would go over some of what you can use Alexa’s search analytics for, both to increase the traffic to your site from search engines and to monitor what the competition is doing.

Let’s start by going to your favorite website’s site information page and clicking on the “Search Analytics” tab. This is the heart of search analytics for a site, so I’ll step through each section one by one.

Search Traffic
This is the percentage of visits to the website that come from searches on search engines. These include Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Baidu, and many more. It’s also worth pointing out that these are visits from searches, and not all traffic from the search engine’s domain. Google, especially, can drive significant non-search related traffic to websites through Google news, Google groups, gmail, etc. A quick thing to do here is compare your percentages with those of your competiton. Are you better at being found on search engines?

Top Queries from Search Traffic
This is a list of the top search terms, both organic and paid, that lead traffic to the site. If you want to know which phrases are the most important in terms of raw visits, this is where you should look.

Search Information
If you click on any of the Top Queries, or any search phrase on this page, you will be taken to a Search Information page and find specific information about the term. First is the Query Popularity for the search, which is just that. It is a measure of popular the search is, with a larger number meaning more people search for the phrase. The Query Competition Index, or QCI, is a measure of how many times ads appear for the term. The larger the QCI the more advertisements there are. The Share of Voice shows which sites the term drives the most traffic to, along with which percentages of the term’s traffic go to each site. Lastly you will find the term’s Engagement for each site. The Engagement is an indication of how much time someone spends on the site compared to the average visitor to the site.

Now back the the site’s Search Analytics section.

High Impact Search Queries for site
This is a list of search phrases and sub-phrases that drive organic traffic to a website, sorted by their Impact Factor. The Impact Factor takes into account how much traffic a phrase drives to the site, how popular the phrase is (Query Popularity), and how much competition there is for that phrase (QCI). This can give you a quick look into which terms are important for a site’s organic search, especially those with a high popularity but low QCI.

This is as much as you can get without a toolbar installed. If you do install and Alexa Toolbar, you will see two more sections devoted to SEM.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Activity by site
These are the terms the site is paying to get traffic from. This is a great way keep tabs on your competition’s SEM campaigns across all search engines. The SEM activity indicates how aggressively the site was advertising for these terms, and is rated as either High, Medium, or Low.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Opportunities for site
These are queries that offer the greatest opportunity for the site to get more traffic through SEM, sorted by the Opportunity score. The Opportunity of a term is calculated using a number of different measures. First is the Query Popularity, if no one is searching for a term then it offers less of an opportunity. The next factor taken into consideration is the QCI. Terms with a lower QCI have less competition, and therefore you will presumably have to bid less for them. Lastly are terms that have a small share of voice for the site. Even if a term is a High Impact Search Query, meaning it is generating organic search traffic for the site, the traffic to the site through that term might be a tiny fraction of the overall search traffic for the term.

Hopefully this has given you some ideas for how you might use search to increase the traffic to your site. I plan on walking through a few case studies in future blog posts, if you a specific use case you would like to see addressed then please leave it in a comment below or send it via Twitter (@alexainternet or @wcoburn)

If you’re a movie fan,  check out the new toolbar for the Internet Movie Database!   You can search IMDb and get the latest movie news right in your browser.   It’s actually quite addictive.

Other features include the  IMDb twitter feed, celebrity birthdays, TV and movie listings.    Optional buttons allow you connect to friends using Facebook and Twitter.

Since the IMDb toolbar is built on the Alexa Toolbar Platform you also get also website popularity information via the popularity meter on the toolbar. Clicking on the meter pops up a window with stats for that site.

You can check out the features and download the toolbar from imdb.alexatoolbars.com

(The toolbar is only available for Firefox right now, but we’re working on versions for other browsers)