Is Alexa Ranking Important To You?
You know, I am going to be straight forward and put my cards on the table here. I’ve been having a hell of a time trying to figure out Alexa and their ranking system. Really and honesty, I have. Alexa makes absolutely ZERO sense to me. Recently, back in April, 2008 they updated their ranking system to include external sources into the mix rather than just strictly using Alexa Toolbar data.
While I initially thougth that that would be promising news, still to this date, I see absolutely no difference in my Alexa Ranking. If fact, my domain name listed in Alexa has gone UNCHANGED for what it seems like around six months or so. You know, I just don’t get it. I can rank #1 in Google for just about anything I put my mind too, but I can’t seem to put my finger on how to rank better in Alexa. Can you?
Doing a search for Alexa ranking tips, or Alexa ranking strategies, etc… is absolutely terrible. Everyone says the same bullshit. Install the toolbar, tell all your friends to install it, add the Alexa widget to your sidebar and cloak your links using their Alexa Redirect URL instead of your actual URL. Whatever…
Alexa is stupid. Believe me, I have a smile on my face as I type this. I am not pissed or anything, I have seriously come to the conclusion that Alexa is plain stupid. There are multiple issues I have regarding Alexa. First off, let’s get you up to date with their press release from April of 2008:
When Alexa began displaying rankings in 1998 it was with the goal of showing Alexa Toolbar users how popular any given site was within the Alexa community. We generated the rankings through an analysis of Internet usage by people who use the Alexa Toolbar. Since that time we’ve been delighted to see that the Alexa Rankings have become a yardstick by which website popularity is measured. We are grateful to the thousands of people who come to Alexa.com each day to check the Alexa Rankings.
In recent months we’ve heard from our Alexa users that understanding Internet usage beyond Alexa Toolbar users was increasingly of interest. Ask and you shall receive!
We listened to your suggestions, and we believe that our new rankings system is much closer to what you asked for. We now aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users.
The second paragraph is about the biggest pile of dung I have read so far in 2008. I think I’ve already written about this once before but oh well. Let’s just look at this part here:
In recent months we’ve heard from our Alexa users that understanding Internet usage beyond Alexa Toolbar users was increasingly of interest. Ask and you shall receive!
In other words, what they mean to say is that hundreds of people were bitching about this and so they decided to give in and change. At one point in time, Alexa ranking was strictly based ONLY from the activity of other Alexa users. Now come on… how stupid is that? Honestly, that is lame and I have said that since the first day I realized how it worked.
So since then, they have changed but provided a very sugar coated way of explaining this in their announcement on April. Anyway, I am totally glad that they do have external sources they NOW use to get their rankings. I am also glad that they keep this information private as it prevents people from learning how to game their system.
With that being said though… people are still gaming their system which leaves people like me in the dust who just want to get a basic understanding of how their system works.
Is this valid, do I really need to install their piece of crap toolbar and also go so far as to recommend that my readers do the same? Well, truth be told, I have had the Alexa toolbar installed for about six months. I can also say that I would bet that many of my readers also have the toolbar installed as well.
Has that helped my ranking? I don’t know… I don’t see a difference? Should I then do what mass majority of other bloggers suggest and advertise Alexa on my blog for FREE with their trashy looking widget in sidebar? Would that help?
One of the elements that cause me to dislike Alexa is the fact that Alexa has a huge target for being gamed as most all people who have an interest in Alexa do so because they want to tweak their rankings so that they can get paid more money for placing sponsored links and posts on their blogs.
These same people who tweak and game the Alexa ranking system are also the same people who say PageRank and Google suck, yet Google has granted them with an element in the equation that allows them to get paid big bucks… at least temporarily until they lose their PageRank. 
All in all, I can’t stand Alexa and their Alexa Ranking system. I do however, enjoy the WayBackMachine. I have used that for years and enjoy it a lot. If I could get a better understanding of Alexa and develop a plan of attack, I wouldn’t mind increasing Alexa rank (becoming closer to #1 — less is better) mainly because it is a statistic and I am very competitve and hate to see my site rank poorly in Alexa.
My Alexa Ranking as of writing this post is 133,198 which many people may feel that is great. But the way I see it is Alexa feels that their are 133,197 sites that are better than mine and if you know me, then you know that I don’t like being anything other than #1. So it kinda gripes my butt a little bit.
What are your thoughts? Do you care about your Alexa Ranking? What are you doing to improve yours?
Popularity: unranked [?]
10 comments
well. i give value to alexa rank, although i don’t quite get how they rank a site right now… i see blogs that i know they have much more traffic than mine, but their alexa rank is higher compared with mine…
my alexa ranks are being updated weekly, but there was a period of 3 weeks or so after the changes where the ranks were not updated…
Alexa, its kind of gimmicky to me, but gives an estimation of traffic. Its only an estimation but it is funny when you type in garryconn.com and johnchow.com
I don’t really value the results of it, and it does seem to improve as I see more traffic. Overall I just check it once every so often, kind of like Technorati.
I just like seeing my improve. Don’t really put too much weight on it though.
I’m not a fan of alexa to be honest. Perhaps it’s because my blog dropped from the top 100,000 to almost 300,000 after the last changes
It just helped be realize that it does me no good and I should not be focused on it.
I don’t know much about Alexa at all. I hear it thrown around a lot, but just don’t get it. I have no idea how they come to their conclusions. I will be very interested to see your development in this area, as maybe you can help it make sense to me
Garry having enough incoming links to give your main page a PR 5 is likely much more important than a day to day Alexa. Over time Alexa does give you one measure to see whether your traffic is growing or not, but as you know there are many other stats you can use as well.
I value Alexa when it makes me look good. I ignore it when it makes me look bad.
It’s all about the marketing man!
I do believe it’s more accurate than it was before the recent “upgrade” of their algo, but it’s still flawed and I’m sure it can still be gamed.
When I send out a mailer and send my list to a blog post, I generally receive 1,000 to 2,000 uniques on top of my normal daily traffic. In the past my alexa ranking would barely rise, if any at all.
Now I see it jumping when I send out mailers. That tells me something is better, although like I said, I’m sure it’s still not 100% accurate.
Well, I’ll just keep that ol’SearchStatus plugin enabled.
I think that Alexa would always matter to site owners around the Internet. The reason is because Alexa has been alive for so long and all types of businesses are depending on the ranks to seek out the better sites.
That’s just my opinion.
-Mike
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