Does a websites Alexa Rank effect your buying decision?
484938
I dont worry about a sites rank when purchasing. \n\nI check credentials such as, encryption of my info. Owner of the domain. I look for real contact info. Phone numbers. Try to find someone else who purchased through them. Google them.\n\nIf all of that leaves you thinking they are shady... get out of there.
155546
search engines are like fishing nets. you can't always guarantee your site will show up at the top, just like you can't guarantee what kind of fish you'll get. spiderbots are constantly rescanning the web, postings are constantly appearing and disappearing, and these all affect your ranking.\n\nyour competitor may have had their domain registered longer, may have more things being written about them on the web, or may have more sites linking to theirs. \n\nthe other thing is there's often a substantial time delay in putting a site up (or modifying/optimizing it for search) and seeing a change in the results. \n\nthe only deals i've ever heard of that weren't scams were SPONSORED LINKS. i wouldn't trust anyone that said they had some "inside edge"... the big engines are public companies whose stock prices would be hurt if they did illicit side deals. \n\nmy recommendations: keep at it, make sure your content is easily searchable (in other words, more text than graphic or flash), make sure you follow the engines' guidelines for submission to a T, and see if you can get other sites (blogs, epinions, etc.) to have links back to your URL. generally speaking, the more people hosting links to your site, the higher your ranking will be.\n\nhope this helps.
1101775
no.  people can click through for any number of reasons.  The only real measure is did it increase sales.  If your cash register didn't ring, the campaign didn't work.  $ are the only metric that matter.
299653
Zillow.com I found grossly mispriced homes. My home for example is worth more than 3x the amount the website listed it at. On the other hand, housvalues.com was very similar in price range. By looking at past local home sales, you can grasp the general market value of your home based on surrounding purchases. Stick with housevalues.com
935415
This really depends on the keywords you are targeting. For example if you choose a keyword such as a company name, the chances are you are already in the top 10. Once you have decided on what words to target, you will need to use them liberally in your meta tags, heading tags, filenames, and your actual RELATED content. The next thing you should examine is getting links from sites that have similar content that help legitimize your site to the webcrawlers. Getting your site listed in the DMOZ directory is also quite helpfull. You should also keep your expectations realistic, you are not likely to beat out amazon for common book related search terms for example.
65266
It has to be in the quality of the results that are coming up in the page. Both Google and Yahoo are very similar now in terms of their results so I tend to use both. Yahoo has some great features on their next.yahoo.com page so I think if some of these were widly available I would be more inclined to stick with them. \n\nI really liked that slider bar that allows you to move from Shopping results to Research results!\nMindest they have called it:\nhttp://mindset.research.yahoo.com/
12068
Amazon's personalization suggestions are based on (among other things) advertising promotions and the feedback you have provided them. Some amazon features such as the "Gold Box" are mostly generated by sales inventory promotions. Others such as the "User's Store" page tend to favor itmes based on the browsing you have done on their site, the products you have purchased, the products you have added to your "wish list", and the ratings you have given products. The more of those things you do (while logged in with an id) on their site the more relevant the reccomendations will be. They even have a "improve your reccomendations" section where you can pick and choose which of the products you have rated will be factored into your reccomendations (so you can fine tune it).
463409
Yes. I get really good deals on ebay. Usually I have no problems.\n\nI have one rule though: don't buy from anybody with a worse then 98% approval rating. Think about it. If they have a 98% approval rating, that means that about 2% of the time people were unhappy. That means 1 in 50 people didn't like the service.\n\nIf they have a 90% rating that means 1 in 10 didn't like the service.\n\nDon't take chances, watch the approval rating.
11781
http://www.alexa.com has the latest rankings\nLook at the lower right hand side.\ncurrently yahoo is leading\n1.Yahoo!\nwww.yahoo.com\n\n2.Microsoft Network (MSN)\nwww.msn.com\n\n3.Google\nwww.google.com\n\n4.EBay\nwww.ebay.com\n\n5.Passport.net\nwww.passport.net
569823
Found your question after querying for Yahoo on Yahoo News from my Yahoo email beta. Yahoo news lead me to your interview with Yahoo VP on Answers.  \n\nYahoo search results are equivalent or better than Google's, and then Yahoo has so much more to offer.  So with the ad platform fix starting this fall, what is not to like?  Google has great brand recognition, but it is very early still on the web.  Of course, Yahoo is undervalued, although I usually look to folks like you to help me decide.
402341
I think babycenter is a good source.  They have consumer ratings as well as if you look anything up on amazon....they have consumer ratings as well.\n\nBut the consumer reports website is the best way to go.
395061
Google or any of the other major search engines do not use 'aesthetic appeal' as a variable when deciding where to rank websites for a given keyword/keyphrase.\n\nThey do however use over 100 other variables.  One of these is quality inbound links and transcripts.net has over 600 of them which is a good start. \n\nTo read about the relative importance of some of these variables look through this excellent Tutorial http://www.seo-blog.com/tutorial.php
100830
First, Alexa is spyware. I strongly recommend you use a different toolbar - like google or yahoo. Alexa will redirect searches so you see their sponsored sites and ads which they get paid for when you click or buy. \n\nIf you still want it, put it in the ignore list on McAfee to avoid having McAfee find it as spyware.
159236
Hello\nIf 'Top' means 'most visited' or 'most popular' then go to alexa.com which has a list of best 500 websites, based on everyday reach & number of visits made by internet users. \nAnd that's pretty reliable I think.
288788
It looks like just another one of those Multi-Level Marketing web opportunities. The come along is great, but many times it fizzles. What I am anticipating is once you identify yourself to them they will want to get you involved in web-sites (that's the automation part of it). It will be up to you to promote your web-site, and there is a monthly cost involved in keeping your web-site up and running.\nPersonally, NO.
412010
I have not, but if you really read the site, and read between the lines, I think they leave out some of the smaller variables.  Which can really make a big difference in some situations.  I read it and if I would of had the extra money, I would have bought it.  I still might.There is another site with a book about secrets the pros don't want you to know.  This book comes with a book about knot tying, and all sorts of software for the computer.  I think it may be a better deal, but in the same sense, it seems to good to be true, so it probably is.  I put the link up for you to check out.  I hope someone responds to this question with a yes so I can read the review myself.  If you get it, let me know, you can e-mail me.  I think it will greatly increase your chances, but it's kinda like reading a book about how to ride a bike, you can read it 20 times.  But until you get on the bike and practice, you'll never really do that good.\nP.S. I put up 2 sites with a plethera of free tips. Enjoy!!
401267
Alexa will give you an estimate, but it's skewed by users with the Alexa toolbar, so it's an estimate only.\n\nSometimes I've had luck trying to find their own stats page... http://stats.domain.com, or http://www.domain.com/stats. You might stumble upon it, just try the obvious variants.\n\nThere are various organizations that measure web site traffic for major sites through the various Netratings and Media matrix type things, but only good for major site "players" with major traffic. Usually based on surveys and user tracking. There are other attempts being developed that aim to provide some sort of "audited" figures like the mainstream press "audited circulation" figures.\n\nYou could also say you are thinking about advertising on the site, and ask for traffic information. This works some of the time.\n\nSo, short answer: not really.\nNot as short answer: where there's a will, there's a way... sortof.