We all check out Alexa’s ranking from time to time for sites and read monthly and annual reports on web usage in Kenya mostly based on information from Alexa.
A few months ago I stumbled upon a new Kenyan website that had an amazing Alexa rank. This made me wonder as I was quite sure this website was not well visited. At the same time I installed the Alexa status bar (I have too many toolbars already) as I found myself visiting Alexa more and more when doing SEO research for clients.
Did not think more about it but got very surprised when a few months later I checked the ranking for lamusoftware.com and wow – at around 600 in Kenya up from nothing.
Today it is at 487 in Kenya and 742,003 in the world. All this from just one installed Alexa status bar.
This means that it should be pretty easy to get within the top 100 in Kenya by just asking your friends to install the Alexa toolbar and send them the occasional link to your website. lamusoftware.com still only gets around 400 visits a month and I know a lot of sites with a lot more visits in Kenya that have a considerably lower Alexa rank.
Sadly this means that all Alexa statistics for Kenya are more or less irrelevant. Maybe the top 10 are accurate but otherwise it is just an indication of how few people in Kenya have the Alexa toolbar installed. And the people who have them installed are like me – web developers and computer geeks.
I have asked a few people to install the toolbar and will send them a link from time to time to see how it works. To be continued.
Update April 13 2010 Kenya: #347, World: #607,724
Update April 25 2010 Kenya: #340, World: #489,990
Comments
Alexa rankings are traditionally very US/European heavy. As you said, it’s only an indication of how many Kenyans use it. I’ve not looked at, nor cared, about Alexa rankings for about 5 years.
Well I knew it was not a 100% but at least I though they would have a few more data sources than their toolbar …