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Why are we still using Alexa Rankings?

July 18th, 2007

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I went to text-link-ads.com to add Hide This Thing to my available inventory of site space, and it would not accept the site because its Alexa Ranking was not high enough. This got me to thinking “why is anyone still using Alexa Ranking as a proper metric for anything?”

I did a little research on why this ranking is relevant, and confirmed my suspicions that this is a very unrepresentative way to measure traffic. The main reason is because Alexa Rankings gather data from browsers that have the Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer or Sparky for Firefox installed. The vast majority of everyday traffic will not have this installed. The most likely visitors to your site that will have these toolbars installed will be webmasters and savvy users who care about search engine optimization. If you’re running a site that has content that is primarily webmaster/tech related, then you’re probably all set, but that’s a pretty narrow slice of the web. The rest of the sites out there end up getting a potentially inaccurate snapshot of their user base on Alexa.

During my research I found a few SEO blogs that gave tips on how to increase a site’s Alexa Ranking. Most of them seem pretty hoky… at least for a measurement system that has as much power as it apparently does.

Here are a few items that I found on SEO Book regarding the subject that I thought I’d share:

  • Download the Alexa Toolbar and surf your own site.
  • Have a few friends download the Alexa Toolbar and surf your site.
  • Shift the focus of your site toward a more webmaster like theme.
  • Participate in many webmaster forums which allow you to place your site in your signature.
  • Write articles about webmaster topics and distribute them around the web.
  • Write an article with tips on how to increase your Alexa rankings.

What everyday site owner is going to do any of that? The web, especially the blog world, is not always maintained by server savvy folk such as myself (and probably you, my dear handsome reader).

I’m not going to suddenly change the focus of my site to webmaster themes just because that will attract the people that most likely have the toolbar installed! However, apparently I will write an article about Alexa Rankings. ;)

Would I love all my visitors to install the Alexa Toolbar and visit all the sites I’ve created? Sure, but even I’m not that big of a beggar.

[tags]alexa, seo, search engine optimization, alexa ranking[/tags]

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  • I use Alexa purely for an idea of what a popular site might be generating traffic-wise.

    Nice job on the CSS Mania post!
  • But even then, surely you have to agree that you take that information with a grain of salt... that is to say that you would assume that the actual traffic would potentially be far greater than what it's measuring.

    I think that Alexa would be far more successful if they went with a Javascript include so that the responsibility falls on site owners instead of asking their visitors to install some toolbar that most people would associate with spyware in the first place.
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