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Alexa Sucks At Explaining How To Boost Rankings
September 9th, 2007 by
Garry Conn | 9 Comments
On the Alexa official blog, Geoffrey Mack published a post announcing how to boost your Alexa Rank. This post, in my opinion was more or a RANT than a RANKING tip, as the contents of the article did not really provide any true ranking tips, but instead provided a rant and a personal attack on quite a few bloggers and companies who are abusing their Alexa ranking system. (*See my footnotes)
I have to come to Geoffrey’s defense and also side with Alexa and warn people not to abuse their ranking system. However, on the flip side… I have to hold myself back from publicly laughing out loud at how lame Alexa is and their precious Alexa ranking and their lame ass toolbar. Mack once again reiterates the correct way to increase your Alexa rank; however, Alexa doesn’t even have a version of their claimed “Brilliant” toolbar for Windows Vista users who use the default web browser that comes with the operating system, Internet Explorer 7.
I am sorry, and I know that most of my readers use Firefox… however, we really are the minority. There are more IE users than Firefox. I am not here to debate which web browser is better, but I am here to say that if I run a billion dollar business… I think it would be in my best interest to make sure that I had a version of my toolbar to work in one of the most popular web browsers used.
This isn’t an issue of web browser war, this is an issue of stupidity and an illustration of how stupid Alexa is. And still to this day, I don’t understand why some of the leading make money online companies such as Text-Link-Ads and ReviewMe.com use Alexa ranking as a basis to whether or not they accept bloggers into their money making network.
As Geoffrey Mack bitches and complains about bloggers who misuse their precious Alexa ranking system, my comment to Mack is, “What choice do you give bloggers?” My comment to Text-Link-Ads and others who use Alexa rank towards the pending approval of bloggers is, “Do you even have a clue as to the number of high level and quality bloggers you pass up because you base your approvals on the Alexa ranking system?” Don’t get me wrong… I love Text-Link-Ads; however, I feel strongly that TLA could do a better job with their pre-screening process. Using a ranking system that only accounts for traffic if a toolbar is installed is stupid. And to make matters worse… using a ranking system that only accounts for traffic using a toolbar that isn’t even compatible with one of the most widely used web browsers to aid in the approval or rejection of a blogger’s acceptance into a program is even more stupid.
Alexa does have potential. However, there are a ton of things working against them. They harbor a system which encourages honest people to become hackers, they boast about how wonderful their technology is, yet their technology doesn’t migrate with the default browser of one of the most popular operating system in the world. Despite the opinions that people hold about Windows Vista being a fluke such as their failed Windows Millennium Edition, there is no excuse for a huge company to not make their toolbar compatible with Internet Explorer 7.
My advice to Geoffrey Mack is to spend less time ranting on their official blog and more time working with the development team towards the release of a toolbar that is compatible with main stream operating systems and web browsers.
Footnotes:
Geoffrey Mack calls out the following bloggers and companies for abusing the Alexa ranking system:
Whether this is true entirely or not, to me it seems like Alexa doesn’t really prioritize tasks in any kind of ranked importance. Maybe they should spend less time calling out bloggers and other businesses and focus more on their own. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to start with an update to their FAQ section.
- http://money.bigbucksblogger.com/skyrocket-alexa-a-fun-experiment/
- http://www.uang.persusi.org/2007/09/04/7-way-to-increased-your-alexa-rank/
- http://www.directorykit.com/promotion-techniques/10-free-ways-to-boost-your-alexa-rank/
- http://www.businessopportunitiesandideas.co.uk/340/improving-your-alexa-ranking
- http://www.jonespc.com/does-the-alexa-toolbar-and-widgets-help-your-alexa-ranking/2007/07/27/
- http://mommibee.com/?p=117
- http://www.upmyrank.com/
- http://www.rankbooster.info/
- http://www.alexabooster.com/
- http://www.download3000.com/download_17139.html
- http://fullycoded.com/?p=59
- http://www.visitorboost.com/
- http://www.alexarankingboost.com/
An After Thought
Advertisers are starting to rant and complain about Text-Link-Ads and other companies that use Alexa Ranking as a measure for acceptance and approval. Fingers are being pointed at people for moving on to the next generation of splogs which formally was mainstream to produce sites commonly called “Made For Adsense”. Because of Alexa ranking system, people are now making sites for Text-Link-Ads. There is a new term to coin in the blogosphere and that is blogs made for TLA. The problem with this is the fact that TLA is a great program, for both the advertiser as well as the publisher. However, because TLA chooses to use a system that can easily be mis-represented, it causes advertisers to be dissatisfied with the results and resort back to other well known programs such as, Google AdWords.
Site Maintenance News
I wanted to drop in a last paragraph here instead of create an entire post about it. A few weeks ago, I re-designed my site to what you see here today. This was a first phase towards the entire project of re-designing the blog. In the next day or so, maybe next week I will be continuing on with phase two.
The second phase to the development and re-design of my blog will consist mainly on the individual post page design. The individual post pages are going to be trimmed back quite a bit so that I can help spread the link love throughout the blogosphere. My home page is designed to distribute link juice to a wide range of sites. However, in order for my blog to perform to the highest standard, I need to trim back the amount of links being displayed in the code so that the links provided in the posts are more effective for the people I link to. The individual post pages will still have a sidebar, but some of the links and content found in the sidebar on the home page will not be broadcasted on the individual post pages. My goal is to have individual post pages that maintain a conservative amount of external and internal links in the sidebar. Part of my job as a blogger is to assure that my references get credited and seen. Having too many links in a sidebar can prevent the post specific links from being credited.
I wouldn’t be too concerned or alarmed, because the second phase to my re-design isn’t going to be major. The individual post pages will look much cleaner and less cluttered.
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Related Keyword Tags: Alexa Ranking Tips
Whats really sad is some of the articles he references do actually agree with him that the best way to increase your rank is to increase your traffic.
The tips on the articles are then aimed at making sure Alexa counts that traffic if for instance the users don’t have their toolbar installed.
Specifically my conclusion says:
“ultimately driving traffic to your site is what will give you the highest ranking, once Alexa is counting the visitors.”
The funny thing about Gary’s post is that I believe some of the articles he links to, he didn’t even read them. Yea a few of the sites listed are services. But some were just blog post pondering the benefits of rumors that we all have heard about. Basically using the toolbar and Alexa widget.
My post specifically, the tittle was “does the alexa toolbar and widget help your Alexa ranking?”
I installed the toolbar, and the widget on one of my blogs and compared it to the other blog that didn’t have the widget installed to see if there was any difference. Clearly not abusing or hacking the system and I assumed it was just linkbait, which I didn’t mind because his blog post has brought me some traffic (a little)
David,
You are right. I didn’t read every article that Geoffrey Mack linked to in his article, in which I also included here in mine. On the same token, I don’t think that you read my article either. In my article, I addressed many opinions I have about the Alexa ranking system all together.
I can sum it up for you. (1) The Alexa Ranking system sucks. (2) People who take advantage of their ranking system suck because they prevent blogs who don’t cheat the ranking system from getting approved in programs like TLA. (3) TLA sucks for using the Alexa ranking system as part of their approval or rejection with new bloggers who apply and as a metric for determining how much a blogger can make within the program. (4) People who take advantage of TLA suck because they are causing advertisers to drop out and resort back to AdWords. People who take advantage of TLA are typically the same people who take advantage of the Alexa ranking system. Their goal is to make splogs or “Make For TLA” blogs. Most common reason why they do this, is because they no longer can make splongs that are “Made For Adsense” because they got banned from Google’s program.
Secondly,
perhaps you need to re-read your own article:
Here is a quote from Geoffrey Mack’s post:
And here are some quotes from your article that he linked to in reference to his point:
So now as it stands, I might not have read every article, but I can say that I have completely read yours. Can you say the same for Mack’s as well as mine? lol
Gary,
I have to apologize. In my comment above, I said “the funny thing about Gary’s post…” I didn’t mean Gary, I meant Geoffrey. I agree with your blog post. I was talking about Geoffrey Mack. Wow I cant believe I made that mistake. I didn’t notice it until now when I came back here. I was commenting on Geoffrey’s blog post, not criticizing you or your post, just got the names mixed up.
I guess if you thought I was attacking you, I would deserve those quote’s. I was going to comment more of what I said that were left out of the quotes you made above, with fancy quotes myself but I lost my steam (had a rough day haha) so heres the regular text version.
Basically.
I said I read somewhere that you should make sure you install the widget and I was going to try it (no harm in that)
I also said I installed the toolbar so at least my visit gets counted, since I do visit my blog from time to time.
then the last thing you quoted me, what I actually said.
“24 hours later, my Alexa ranking dropped pretty decently (lower is better, so dropped is an improvement). I don’t know if it had anything to do with me installing the toolbar or not, but there was some progress. On the other hand, I didn’t add the widget to Jonzee.com…”
I never came to any conclusion, I said I saw an improvement but never said the improvement was because of the widget and toolbar. I actually said that the blog that didn’t have those things installed saw improvement also. At the end of that post I said it might be a good idea to have them installed, and theres nothing wrong with that, you might as well get your own visit to your blogs counted.
That blog post was made on July 27th(over a month before Macks post), on July 29th (still over a month before macks post), I made another blogpost with a little update on my Alexa numbers.
In that post, I was still (and am now) a little indifferent to if there was any benefit to my installing the toolbar etc. Both sites had still improved, only one had the Alexa stuff.
Basically, my blog post was about me installing the Alexa toolbar and Widget to see if it had any effect on my Alexa ranking. I didn’t game anything or perform any hacks, I never said once that I believe my installing those items helped my Alexa score, I actually said in both of those post that “I don’t know if it was because of the toolbar”, when I talked about any improvements in my Alexa score
I’m pretty sure Mack could’ve found some better blog post where people were actually doing what he wanted to criticize. like I have said, I have read rumors about the Widget and Toolbar before. using my blog post as an example was a bit of a stretch…come on Gary, you know it was.
A side note… dunno if you read my comments on Mack’s blogpost, but I didn’t know that was an “official Alexa blog” nor did I know Mack worked for Alexa when I wrote those comments (I had never been to that blog before that post). I didn’t find that out until I read your post (yea I read your post). learn something new every day hehe. I said that Alexa was flawed in one of the comments too. lol. He probably hates me.
The funny part is one, Mack does a great job hiding himself on the Internet. I can’t find hardly any info on that guy… lol!!!
And second part,
I totally agree 110% with you there… even I can spend less than five minutes digging in Google Blog Search to find better references than Mack used on his post.
Third, I still stand by saying that I didn’t think it was very professional of Mack to publish that post all together.
As far as you and I go… man, I have no issues with you at all and totally respect both comments you have left. I think all is fine and regardless, I am sure you are getting a little bit of traffic from all the added publicity… which there is nothing wrong with that!
Take care man, and thanks for coming back to clarify things… I see no wrong with the info that you published; however, I did provide the above quotes from the previous comment to illustrate that Mack did use your words in corresponding with the point he was making on his blog. But again, on the same token… I think he could have found about 1000 better candidates to pick on.
All is cool in my book. I hope to keep you as a reader. Thanks again for stopping by.
Best Regards,
Garry Conn
Alexa is so out of whack it is just pathetic, real numbers to prove my point Bu.bulicio.us has on avg 4000 unique hits and the last two weeks avg 9,000 page views and my week rank is for one week avg 147,060 yet there is a guy which I will not give the url not to give the free publicity who according to his own post he has on avg 500 unique hits and avg 1500 page views per day and he has a rank of 37,090, does this make any sense?
Now I make on avg right now about $250.00 a day on revenue from Bu.bulicio.us because of the traffic I have this guy makes again according to him he made $54.00 last week of course he makes nothing in money because he has nothing traffic.
The problem is Bu.bulicio.us qualifies for PayPerPost on Oct 17 which is the 90th day the Blog has been live and I will be competing for PayPerPost with this guy that has no traffic and he will probably make more money per post than me.
My site is a general interest site most people do not use the Alexa tool bar this guys site is about how to make money blogging ( which I just find hilarious because he is giving advise to people when he is only making 54 bucks a week) of course all the noobs that visit his site daily have the Alexa tool bar installed.
Alexa is a joke if they really want to make there ranking real all they have to do is make there system read the widget for stats.