Topic: Bitcointalk is not doing well in Alexa rank because of the Merit system (Read 648 times)

To be honest, I'm one of the user who actually found this site in Alexa in the year 2017, it was the year of ICO. many users who are spamming in this community that year got banned or got rid now by the forum moderators for good. Some of them have stopped posting because they are no longer qualified to join a certain campaign because of the lack of merits or the highest rank requirements. The reason why our Rank is falling at Alexa is due to the activeness of the moderator to clean some out of topic posts made by those spammers. there are lots of reporters lately which really help to clean this forum. Our community has improved since then, there are less out of the topic post and constructive replies are being made to avoid being report or tagged by the DT.

OP, I think your arguments is weak and your assumptions is wrong. Many people already said why you're wrong, I just want my 2 cents Satoshi. First, Alexa rank isn't main thing to determine popularity of website. Second, merit system isn't main factor why Bitcointalk Alexa rank decreased. It's probably insignificant factor at all. If you will check Bitcointalk traffic stats and charts of Bitcoin price, it has direct correlation. When Bitcoin goes up, Bitcointalk get more visitors and opposite. In the end of 2017, start of 2018, Bitcointalk had the most visitors, when Bitcoin price was ATH, there was peak of ICO projects.
And having less users isn't bad thing - I will pick quality over quantity. It's forum and main value of this forum is discussion. These people who came here here to earn easy money by spamming doesn't gives any benefits for this forum. Bitcointalk haven't lost anything after they left.
Why can argue about that Merit system isn't perfect, but in general I see only positive influence for Bitcointalk given by it.

The Alexa ranking might be important to advertisers who wants to advertise here, but I would much rather have a lower Alexa ranking than having a forum with millions of "newbie" accounts spamming the forum. We should also mention that the bot attacks and fake traffic that was generated by that, has been mostly neutralized with the introduction of the Captha system. 

I think advertisers would much rather be linked with a well organized forum with a good reputation for good moderation and genuine traffic and not the opposite of that. 

Bitcointalk.org have now struck a balance between offering a great advertising platform and also a fun experience for it's members, with the introduction of the sMerit system. 

Of course thats true, because alexa ranking is not a site that promotes bitcoin forums but rather sites that analyze traffic from sites.

The level of accuracy that is not well indicated by the alexa ranking for the site bitcointalk.org is also not a reflect that the forum has lost many users, only the traffic measured by alexa ranking is a site search keyword or SEO. IMO

Of course, bitcoin forums have high search traffic from 2017 to 2018 because bitcoin is very popular among people because of the very high price jump of 20K usd. But after that, we can also monitor that there is a decrease in the number of active forum users during this time period due to several factors below:

• Merit system in January 2018
• Many ICOs end up scam
• Many bounty not worth it
• e.t.c

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency have become popular assets and are already one decade old, we can find lots of news about it on social media and elsewhere. Increased adoption is also a determining factor that the forum is the right place to discuss a few of the problems in it without the need for promotion from other parties.

Alexa ranking does not affect the ups and downs of the number of users. after all, ranking on alexa does not reflect this forum abandoned by users. because, as far as I know, Alexa ranking will increase if more members are using the Alexa addon in the browser he uses. this is makes Alexa ranking accuracy does not reflect how many users are actually active.


On the other hand, this forum is well known to the crypto community and does not need alexa to get revenue from advertising. just look at how much money this forum has from donors and banners. This is very enough to support the forum without having to alexa tracking to get advertisers.

And why should it? According to Google Trends, forum activity in 2015 and 2016 is roughly equal to activity right now. And that was way before there was a merit system. The interest is measured in percentage so we're at 5% of popularity the forum had in 2018.

As long as google search queries about bitcoin related things turn up with bitcointalk links in the first page of results, I don't see a problem with the way things are going now.

I don't understand what you are saying. You didn't make any point literally regarding the thread. And what it has to do with my post count being equal with my activity. I think you should contribute something related to the article on alexa rank and the merit system. I have been clarified that the forum doesn't care about their Alexa ranking. I am not complaining, I'm sharing my opinion.

So I decided to take a look at your account.



Your post count and activity count is literally equal. Are you just complaining about the system because you aren't able to rank up due to the merit system? Like 99.9% of the people complaining about the merit system? Stop it with this shit. This has been discussed a hundred times in the past already.

Looool, I didn't expect to see my topic mentioned here. So I'm the reason why the forum scares the visitors and also for being low ranked on Alexa, right? My, oh my, what have I done Well this must be indeed an allegation based on pure logic.


On October 25th 2019 I was a Newbie, with a few posts and 0 merits. I earned 600 merits in about 6 months and a few days starting literally from zero. If you share valuable information, your content will be appreciated. The condition is to post indeed valuable information. If you want just to spam: heheee the way is infinite. I saw a member a while ago who had 6000 posts and 0 merits. There are a lot of members supporting newbies which are posting high quality texts / essays, or at least which try to post something valuable. Nobody would expect you to post like a Bitcoin expert while you are a beginner, but at least you can try to share coherent thoughts. And to use an adequate English, not perfect but adequate - meaning to not sound like a caveman.



I repeat: I was a newbie too. And honestly, I did not know a single thing about activity, merits, the correlation between them default trust, Marketplace trust, feedbacks, flags, merit sources, signature restrictions, PMs / posts restrictions for each rank, evil IPs / points, copper memberships and so on. But I searched on Google. For example: "what is merit BitcoinTalk" / "what is activity bitcointalk". And, eventually, I found the correct topic answering my question. What is important is that I really wanted to learn how the forum works and not to be here for spamming it or for using it in various obscure ways. If you want to learn how the forum works, you can really do it.


I already answered that.


The forum wasn't built for fun reasons. If you need fun, you can watch standup comedy on YouTube. However, you can find plenty of humor here, in a lot of topics and from a lot of members.


Similar to previous answer: the forum wasn't built to rank up on Alexa, as Bitcoin wasn't created to be valued to 10.000$. The forum was created for Bitcoin-related discussion, for improving it, for spotting bugs in the code and so on, while Bitcoin was not meant to be listed on exchanges nor to reach a certain amount in USD - it was invented for eliberating people from the oppression of the governs, by giving them the absolute power over their finances and by offering them anonymity pseudonimity.

I hope this helps.

Sorry I didn't understand your question. A 1st place at alexa traffic is not the issue at least a better rank on Alexa traffic like in 2018 were we had some good rank around 900. It's all good though hope I passed the right message to this forum. But it is not really important here now I understand.

I don't know the site with that ranking on Alexa. I have seen some reasons why this forum may not be interested in their Alexa rank since they have already ranked in the most important keyword "Bitcoin forum" that is a nice work so far.

But perhaps that is not the main goal of this forum...
When I type "bitcoin forum" in a search engine like duckduckgo, then voila, I get bitcointalk.org as the first entry. With startpage it is the fourth entry. Sounds very good to me.
What would a 1st place at Alexa Traffic do better?

(Alexa Traffic has nothing to do with Alexa from Amazon, does it?)

The merit system changed one thing!
You can't farm high-rank accounts based only on activity, this, and only this.

You don't need to be legendary, you don't need 500 merits to write on the forum, and you don't even need an account to READ.

The number of visitors dropped because there were no more "bounties" no more earning twice the average wage in your country by posting links. That's all.
The moment you stop paying people for posting, traffic drops, it's normal.

Take a guess which site this is, also crypto-related and with no merit system:



What the merit system has done is actually clearing a lot of shitposting, a lot of useless answers, and made it a place far better for real newbies.

The alexa rank helps you to know how good your site is performing in bringing traffic, So the importance of Alexa rank is to know if your site is doing well or not within the past 90 days.

Well, in the end, it will completely depend on the person's intention. If a blog is a certain person's main source of income, then of course he/she's going to take extra more time and effort to optimize SEO, in contrast to the other blogs which are just made mostly as a hobby.

Yeap, in this case I really don't think SEO matters that much for Bitcointalk at all(even though it ranks #1 on the "bitcoin forum" search query anyway), as it is THE Bitcoin forum anyway. I don't think anyone even suggests the bitcoincom forum(rightfully so).

The sense of the merit system has already been sufficiently discussed in the whole forum and therefore I will not comment on it. But what I am asking myself now is, how important is the Alexa rank and if it is important, how can we increase it?

I personally have some blogs that's not really SEO optimized. But it has some readers already and that's good enough. Optimizing SEO really takes a lot of my time and comparing to the cost and benefit of having ranked first on Google search doesn't mean much to me.

Bitcointalk is big enough already, I don't think trying to get first on every SEO-related website is a good thing to pursue too. And anyway, I believe the lack of good bounties contributes more to the traffics compared to the merit system in general.

Site rankings through Alexa, SimilarWeb, and other sites are mostly based on web traffic, so post/content quality is automatically out of the equation.

Why would Alexa rank be down because of merit system?
I would feel like it would go up since people will want to post good content to get merit (like me ) and will spend more time on the site as a result

But your research is interesting, wouldn't have thought that

The difference between ranks is mostly cosmetic: signatures, avatars, personal text. There's no limits to posts or anything, so why should newcomers be afraid of merit system? You can use this forum as newbie rank just as well as legendary rank. If it scares away shitposters who heard tales about how you can make money by posting on this forum, then it's a good thing no matter how you look at it, because if the quality of conversations is better, it would attract more users in the long run.

I guess Bitcointalk does not care about these ranking sites whatsoever, We are not competing with anyone this is the home of satoshi Nakamoto and that is enough it is the best bitcoin and altcoin forum. The merit system really helps on eliminating bots users that are only after with bounties and abusing it. True and Interested users will stay here in the forum and those who are not willing to learn and just after for free money I guess they are long gone.

It's my call lol, that's unkind of you man How do you mean statistician? I think I prefer it instead.

Yes, you will be seeing it a lot especially if someone is talking about merit, and it will be a neverending argument and drama in this forum. I think you just need to be passionate about what you want in this forum.

Choose at least 1 or two on how you can contribute, it maybe scam busting, or maybe you want to focus on a technical side (which I prefer), or be a good forum statistician. It's your call. Just be passionate man!

Sure they is nothing to be hateful about on my stand. Nobody is taking it personal neither did I write those lengthy words because of merits. I wouldn't have made this post if I am looking for merit from people, I should have praised the forum instead. But I'm pointing out some few things that we need to look into for our own benefits.

I have been seeing a lot of this phrase lately. 

Thought you were rude

Most of them are unappreciated because they do not actually care nor absorb the replies of the members here. They just ask and leave their thread as if nothing happened.

You're right that it takes a lot of time to learn stuff that is new to our ears, but that doesn't mean that you should be in a hurry in making such lengthy post in which you expect to get a lot of merit, it just doesn't work that way. I don't want to lecture you nor make some hateful post about your stand. Just wanna say that be observant and learn your stuff in a natural way

Try not to focus on getting merits but rather on the knowledge you can get. All you have to do is to read and ask. Most of the answers you will get from this thread will not make any difference.

Hey I am talking to you calmly okay!

You don't expect a newbie to do a great job in this forum if they are not handled in a better way than just asking if they can't make topics or write posts? they can do all that out of choice. They own their gadgets and do what they wish. The earlier they are appreciated the better. People have different IQ and will need enough time to understand things like blockchain and bitcoin. Don't compare how easy it was for you to others.



It is the fault because the merit system is adored more than bitcoin in this forum that any new member that visits here must get to see or know about the merits. It encourage some and discourage some in other ways like can I do what it takes?

I don't see how any newbie member can't learn or share information. What's stopping  newbie members to be productive? They can't make topics, they can't  write posts? Or you think that someone would miraculously be better member if he is able to rank up easier?


Nonsense. There is an abundance of merit ready to be shared to newbies. Just check The future of Bitcointalk: Low Ranking Top Merit earners in the past 30 days and you will see how many low level members can earn bunch of merit in a month, and you will be surprised. If anything, there is lack of quality new members. Naturally, some will rank up faster than others, but everyone that is genuine, patient and came here to learn&share  will rank up in reasonable time frame.


And how is that fault of merit system, that people don't take time to properly learn all forum features, boards, rules and regulations?

Well, they can freely create an account right now too and freely contribute or ask questions. People are already doing that regardless of rank. Again, rank doesn't matter.

People can use Tor/VPNs/Proxies, and some people's IP addresses are dynamic.

I know they can read as much as they want but can't contribute or ask questions on the topic of their choice, sorry I wasn't referring to those kind of people that don't have an account with us.

Don't you think that they is a way to track an already banned user that created another account just to come and spam again?

I think today is my first time of seeing a site that doesn't care about their Alexa ranking. Hmm, like you said "quality discussion" without enough readers isn't it a waste of information? How about the people that will be searching for this forum and what they will see is other crypto blogs that pop out on search engine. you can't be sure of that. Because you didn't leave this forum from the start doesn't mean you should show less care about the users that left the forum. I'm not worried about the merits, I'm worried about the people that left the community because they got no merit after all the time they spent on the forum.

You can't predict the exact reason why some people leave the forum. Most of them are not here to spam. I know how difficult it is to get to the top in this forum. That is one of the reasons people leave here, and most of them don't surf here enough to know that they is a sub-forum for their respective countries and continent that can welcome them and make them feel at home.

We need proper guide that's all

So the moderators ban them, and then what? They're free to create new accounts that they can again grow just through making 1 post daily to earn activity points. This is why the merit system works, because even if they create a million accounts, it wouldn't matter if they aren't capable of earning merits

You do realize that people can freely come here and learn from the existing posts all they want, like right now, right? Heck they don't even need an account.

The best solution to this problem is to increase the number of bot moderators that will be available to check illicit moves on the forum and ban the accounts. Falling behind in ranks, from the age of the forum we may end up being the only users in this forum. Or does it mean you don't want more people to come and learn from the millions of posts in the forum?

Very long post, can't quote one by one since I am on mobile phone. First thing is this forum isn't anything related to financial investments or something similar that investors will check Alexa rank before invest. This forum has created for discussion regarding bitcoin and related stuff. So either merits system is exist or removed you will able to make discussion. No one will prevent you from it. So why you are worried about merits?

Whoever left this forum for merit system they were just a spammer. They never contributed themselves for forum. So who care even they left or stay? If you are a good contributor and good poster on this forum you don't need to worry about merits.

So for forum, traffic or Alexa rank isn't much important. The most important part for this forum is healthy discussion.

I think it's not bad to consider having a better rank with Alexa because it can boost the economy of the marketplace here. It's not worth depending on your entire site but if you can achieve better, why not? But the verdict is that it's not the end of the forum if you don't get a high ranking there. It's also not the measure of success. It's not that important but okay to get a good rank.

Depending on the amount of post is just spam altogether. I would choose quality over quantity anytime.

Do you know how pogosticking can affect a site rank. I don't think with the nature of this forum today will stop the bots from coming and also account farming is still on the rise. Which is one of the reasons the merit system is not favorable to the newbies in this forum. Come to think of it, one person having more than 10 accounts. Once the merit source to those accounts gets Smerits the merit goes to their personal accounts first before giving it out to other users as well the merit might have finished.

? ? ? You're pretty much asking like "how can I get promoted in my job if I don't perform well?". Merits are for quality posts in the first place. That doesn't make sense in the slightest.

A LOT harder. They'd need to have the 150 sMerit to start with, to be able to abuse it.

So you're point is? Again, rank is irrelevant in this case. Good post? It gets some attention. Bad post? It doesn't get much attention. REGARDLESS OF RANK.

But the forum isn't difficult to comprehend though? It might be if ranking up is your main focus, which shouldn't be the main focus in the first place. Bitcointalk is a forum. A place where like-minded people talk about Bitcoin. Not a place to primarily make money.

It's already proven to be a good idea though. LOL. If you think there are better solutions, go ahead. Name them.

This forum doesn't need a good Alexa rank, neither spammers paratising it.

This forum is a place for bitcoin discussions, project development to bitcoin related stuff, service promotion and community support.

This way it is useful for bitcoin, which is the reason for thi forum to exist.

Correlation doesn't equal causation. The reason the Alexa rank was so high in early 2018 was due to the preceding bull run. Everything was in the green. You could buy any useless scam token and still make a profit from it. The forum was overrun with bounty hunters, spammers, and scammers. There were new altcoins being launched every hour, and new bounty campaigns to go along with them. Thousands of accounts were created just to spam utter trash for the signature rewards. The death of 99.9% of these altcoins are what reduced the traffic to the forum, not the merit system.

Most threads from newbies aren't given much attention because they are either outright spam, have been discussed 100 times before, or they've just copy and pasted from other places (or even worse, tried to hide the fact they are copying and pasting by "summarizing" content they don't understand and introducing multiple errors).

Good. The vast majority of signature campaigns just encourage spammers.

This is completely the wrong attitude, and it's why most threads from newbies don't get any attention, as discussed above. New threads should be opened when you have something interesting the community will want to talk about. Not because you want to earn merit, or write an article, or attract attention to yourself, or gain motivation, etc. Too many newbies open too many useless new threads.

Your problem is that you view the forum's primary function as enabling people to earn via their signatures, and the merit system as a hurdle en route to that goal. You're wrong. The primary function of the forum is to encourage meaningful discussion, and the merit system supports that goal.

You are getting wrong here. From what is said I mean how will a post that is not quality enough get a merit. Like you said "they can post as long as they're not spamming" some users are not like that, if they see they can't contribute they remain dormant. And for account farming how difficult does it look for a user with 150 Smerit to farm accounts on this forum?

My point here is; Instead of ignoring the message I think some corrections can be made on that same thread for the OP to learn how to put more energy next time. At least knowing that people read their article can motivate them to write next time.

I know their rank won't stop them from investing. But then a few among the newbies are here to invest or watch how the forum works before they can unleash their purpose here. If care is not taken on them they are likely to leave if the forum is difficult to comprehend.

I didn't in any way think that way. What i am saying is that they are a lot of arguments in this forum.

They should be a better way than tightening the forum, I don't think not looking at the forum rank is a good idea. We have to look into it from a better angle.

The forum has so much interesting and competent information, which was not a few years ago. Beginners are open to all sections for their own understanding of any direction. As they say, there would be a desire. For merit, you need competent and useful posts. Yes, maybe for some it is at first difficult. But do not equate the forum to the competition for merit. Why forum information that does not bring any benefit? Or a bunch of plagiarism? Unique content is important. And the forum can be proud of this content.

No, I think people still want to trade with a newbie... especially if he accept using an escrow. Usually newbie didn't want to accepting escrow and didn't have have any reputation on his account, it's why people didn't want to trade with a newbie.


This is only suggestion and has not been implemented yet on this forum, so this is incorrect reason if you think people will scared after read this thread.


Are you sure about this? I think you should check service section once again. What about Chipmixer? Chipmixer was launch their campaign from 2017 and till now their haven't change the pay rate and the slots. According to last payment from Chipmixer is 4.07782635 BTC, do you think Chipmixer will keep paying around 4 BTC for signature campaign, If signature campaign in this forum is not have traffic and not profiting for them?


Please, never say Merit system is make difficult to newbies, mostly people joining this forum to get money only. What do you think if the newbies don't care about the rank and his purpose is want to discuss about bitcoin only? I believe they will never said merit system is make difficult for them. The purpose of merit system is to force members to create high quality post, reducing spam, and also reducing people want to get easy profit from here without learning bitcoin or forum.


Do we should judge this sites based on Alexa rank? Satoshi is creator of bitcoin and this forum, so you should judge from bitcoin aspect too. Bitcoin is the king of cryptocurrency (always on top 1 even when bitcoin in major dump/downtrend), the most valuable and worthies from all cryptocurrency. Bitcoin survive for 10 years and still counting. Bitcointalk.org always on top 1 forum from other best cryptocurrency forum [1] [2]

Not all users were deranked back to Newbie. Only meritless Jr. Members, since all the ranks above had merits (earned or airdropped).

There’s been a global pandemic in between. We should give that a fair share of the reason behind. Alexa does not measure traffic with consolidated certainty, but rather uses extrapolated data from a subset of users. In a pandemic such as this, the models can easily go adrift.
Note the recurrence of the term "estimate" in the above quote (https://blog.alexa.com/improving-your-alexa-rank/).

Not many newcomers will visit Meta, and that thread is really a one-off (i.e. not a recurring idea).

Merits do not expire for anyone. Some Merit Source Merits may go unspent, but you can’t expect them to always spend them all (it’s a pretty selfless task, and time consuming). Sometimes, they need to resort to sprees of a kind to ease their burden …

I don't think the overriding purpose of the forum is to achieve a high Alexa rank.

No, I'd expect the rank would not elicit any emotional response, because it is utterly irrelevant.

Alright here we go again.

What are you talking about? They can freely post just like anyone as long as they're not spamming. The merit system just makes it difficult for people to go here solely for bounty campaigns, and definitely to make it hard for them to account farm.

So a badly made topic didn't gain attention. What's your point? Rank is irrelevant in this case.

Tell you what. A lot of the newbies aren't here to "invest". If they're only here for investing knowledge, they wouldn't even need to take note of their ranks. It's not like their rank is stopping them from investing, right?

So you think spam and account farms are "fun"?

LOL. You think Satoshi would be happy for Bitcointalk being a spam forum?

---

Ultimately, Bitcointalk surely did sacrifice some of it's traffic and activity, in exchange for better and more constructive conversations, which is a huge win in my book. Though, we don't even know to what extent of those traffic drop was actually from the merit system. You also need to take note of the actual decrease of interest in Bitcoin since the bull run of 2017.

If you like spam forums, go to the "the-forum-that-should-not-be-named" forum that once had a big signature campaign here.

P.S. I haven't seen a reasonable excuse for removing the merit system, ever since it was implemented. The complaints are really mostly from people who can't rank up themselves so they resort to complaining instead. Tell you what, if you're having a hard time ranking up, maybe do more studying.

---

EDIT: oh. no wonder you didn't know about the horrors of not having the merit system.

Have you considered the Alexa Rank before 2017.
IMO 2017 and 2018 were years when there was so much spam and SCAM ICO bounties that attracted lots of spambots to make bounty reports here. This made it look like the forum was registering so many forum users and yet it was just bots and account farms.

What use is it to have thousands of daily visitors that are just bots amidst a forum filled up with spam? 

I took a look at this forum's rank on Alexa, it is not good enough; provided that Content is king which is a big tenet in this forum, and why merits were integrated for users who post quality content no doubt articles from this forum rank very fast on google but the number of visitors to this forum has reduced and it affected the ranking of this website.

In 2018 according to Wikipedia, this forum ranked 900 on Alexa Globally.

Later in 2018, it was announced that users without any merit will be demoted to Newbie regardless of their ranks. During this period, so many users left this forum and most accounts were sold out for a couple of dollars. People were desperately in need of bitcointalk accounts with merits so they won't be a Newbie and also for their several businesses in the service thread. (You won't trade with a newbie)

Now in 2020, the forum ranked number 11,525 in February and at 22,845 this month this shows that our forum is doing well in good content but performs very bad in traffic, some threads scare new visitors away, just like this one https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/suggestion-to-make-rank-up-more-difficult-5220580

what is the actual aim of making the merit system very hard for users? This will scare some away and those who are not good at writing, it means they don't belong here?

An internet forum where people come to learn and share information on bitcoin is not just a personal forum for some users that have a good rank to suggest how difficult the forum will be. Also, it is clear that most threads from the newbies are not given much attention because of how they structured their article.

If you noticed well, you will see that the signature campaigns are getting closed because companies don't get exactly the kind of traffic they used to see.

The forum is now difficult not only for newbies but for investors who came as newbies and left because they couldn't understand the forum better. I like this section "beginners and guide" but I didn't discover it as a newbie.

I will say that this forum is easy if you have worked hard on it and it's part of you, But very difficult for freshers because of how old members treat them with merit.

What is the reason behind holding a Smerit without giving it out? Most of them will waste or expire. If we put more energy on how we make good articles and also make it easier to harbor visitors that turned to members. This forum will rank as before and we will get enough people that will make use of our signatures for adverts.

I know our moderators are working hard to reduce spam and scam here. But I will encourage users to make here fun, we are in a war forum of smart Alecks that counter every single thread that is published. How do you expect better learning if they are no fun going on here?

looking at the rank of this site do you think Satoshi will be happy? We can build a forum as famous as bitcoin.

link to Alexa rank on bitcointalk.org

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bitcointalk.org
rank for 2018 below
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcointalk#cite_note-alexa-1