There is much debate about using the traffic ranking data from Alexa. Some sites, such as the paid review sites, use it to determine the amount of traffic your site receives. Many individual webmasters don’t care much for the data as it doesn’t present an accurate picture of traffic.
I don’t put too much stock into the actual ranking on Alexa, as it may not provide a complete traffic picture. I do, however, know that many sites and individuals use it as sort of a gauge as to the amount of traffic your site gets. In this post I’ll explain what Alexa is, and provide a simple, yet controversial method of increasing your traffic rank.
About Alexa
Alexa is an Internet company founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat. Amazon.com acquired Alexa in 1999 for $250 million in Amazon stock, and is currently a subsidiary of Amazon.com.
The company offered a toolbar that visitors can download and install for free. This toolbar is still available and is used by Alexa to record traffic to Web sites. The controversy surrounding the toolbar is the representation of the user base. If the user base is a fair statistical sample, then the results should be fairly accurate, however not much is known about the samples. This is what causes many individuals to disregard the Alexa ranking entirely.
The ranking on Alexa is based on a place-like system, where the site ranked number 1 receives the most traffic. The higher the number, the less traffic a site receives. Currently, Yahoo.com is ranked number one.
Increasing Your Alexa Rank
There are many sites that you can find that talk about increasing your site’s Alexa ranking. The easiest and most common method is to install the toolbar and visit your site regularly. You can even install the toolbar on many computers and then visit your site from each one.
Another, but more controversial, method is to install an Alexa widget on your site. Some people believe that this works because the widget makes a request to Alexa to display the information on your site. Others don’t think this works.
I have recently updated the template of Technically Easy. While previous template contained the Alexa widget, I decided not to install the widget in the new template.
When I checked the traffic before upgrading my template, my traffic rank was around 1.8 million. After installing the new template without the widget, my traffic rank climbed to over 2 million, and I had more visitors. I decided to reinstall the widget and now my traffic rank stands at 943,583, an increase of over 1 million. I think I’ll keep the widget on my site and see what happens. It doesn’t cost me anything to use it.
In case you are wondering where the widget is located, I decided to hide it. Displaying a traffic rank of 2 million just doesn’t look too good. Maybe as my ranking increases, I’ll show it on my blog.
Summary
There is a controversy on the Web regarding Alexa and their traffic ranking system. Many think it is inaccurate, however, some sites, particularly the paid-review sites use it to gauge the amount of traffic a Web site receives. If you do plan on using Alexa, you can install their free toolbar, or even their widgets to help increase your traffic ranking. There is, however, a debate on whether the widgets help increase your ranking. I’ll leave that decision up to you.
Update – January 09, 2008
My Alexa rank now stands at 380,042 with the widget still active on Technically Easy.
Update – January 27, 2008
My alexa rank has dropped below 300,000. My new rank is 284,987.
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on December 22, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Well, I run the Alexa toolbar, but I think it is a farce. It can be so easily manipulated. There was a time where I wanted to up my Alexa score and so I cheated.
I would click at home on my pages. Score goes up. Then I would go to work and click some more. Score goes up again. Imagine a website with 100 people that requested their employees to use the Alexa toolbar at home and work.
You get the idea how easily the program can be manipulated.
The only people that really use Alexa in my opinion are people that want to use the information to buy or sell advertising. A limited audience that doesn’t really show the traffic to that particular website.
As of the date of this comment my Alexa score is 190,251. I get over 1,000 page views each day. What does the Alexa score really mean? Not much in my opinion.
on December 28, 2007 at 4:01 am
Like it or not, search engines use data like this to make assessments that affect the life of all blogs. In this case “perception may be reality”
on December 28, 2007 at 3:35 pm
I agree. I don’t think the Alexa ranking is accurate in any way. It is too bad that many sites use that information to rank Web sites.
My ranking is now below 500,000 since I installed the widget. I bet if I remove the widget it will probably climb back to over 2,000,000 again.
on January 29, 2008 at 9:45 am
Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users. Google rank web pages according to its popularity and importance based on inbound.
on April 9, 2008 at 8:30 am
I am the webmaster of http://www.fortunehotels.in and looking the ways to improve ranking in Alexa. I have installed alexa toolbar & widgets but not big result at now.
on February 14, 2009 at 3:11 am
This is a great post, fortunately 70% of the time of website owner is consumed in experimenting towards increasing page rank and alexa rank. To start with increasing page rank one must start with downloading Alexa toolbar for IE or firefox on as many system possible. as a second step alexa widget on every page of your website, by this way every webpage opened is counted while calculating rank inspite is user does not have alexa toolbar installed.
on July 31, 2009 at 1:13 am
Today I have found what I have been looking for and that is a very big day for me! Thank you for this blog and this post (Alexa and Traffic Rank)and I hope you will publish my comment as this is a great site and worthy of congratulations. Lizzie Soul
on May 14, 2010 at 4:56 am
i admire John Chow because of his innovative ways to gain traffic both from whitehat and greyhat methods.-’*
on July 24, 2010 at 2:52 am
anyone who makes money on the internet would love to know the secret of John Chow’s success.,.*
on September 9, 2010 at 8:37 pm
John Chow is my idol when it comes to online moneymaking;.-
on November 12, 2010 at 3:18 am
well i do not use alexa toolbar but it depends on who are your visitor if a farmer then alexa will not notice because a farmer do not care alexa but if a webmaster visit me alexa notice it because, webmaster often uses alexa toolbar.
on February 24, 2011 at 2:54 am
I found many tips to improve the alexa ranking on the internet, but I have to say I’ve chosen the quick and easy way to improve the ranking of my team’s site.
A few people recommended www.alexage.com to improve Alexa ranking.
They worked great for us and our site’s Alexa rank is now in Alexa’s top 100K.
on March 19, 2011 at 5:19 am
orked great for us and our site’s Alexa