Alexa is a website, which provides the web information based on the traffic and ranks the website according to the web traffic and its popularity. It is the group company in the Amazon network. Alexa ranks a website based on the amount of users who have visited the website and several other factors like time on site, bounce rate influences the rank of the website.
What is Alexa Rank?
Alexa rank is the ranking derived by the Alexa based on the level of traffic a website receives and tracks the traffic and popularity of the website with the toolbar and ranks the website accordingly. Although there is some controversy over Alexa ranking for typical Internet behaviour, especially for the less trafficked sites it is widely accepted by some of the monetizing sites for tracking the popularity of the website.
Alexa’s Definition on Ranking
Alexa’s traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users and data collected from other, diverse sources over a rolling 3 month period. A site’s ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and page views. The number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day determines reach on the given day. Page views are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single page view. The site with the highest combination of users and page views is ranked #1.
What is great in Alexa?
Although there is no kind of special benefit, there are many Webmaster who prefer to increase the Alexa rank and will dream to have a good rank as it is the only analytical company which ranks the website based on the traffic. Some advertisers and ad networks will consider the Alexa rank for measuring the popularity of the websites. Check out the New Changes in the Alexa ranking Dashboard.
Problems with Alexa ranking
Alexa ranked can be highly influenced by using the Alexa toolbar and gadgets the webmaster who were aware of the Alexa gadget will always get the benefit of better rank when compared to the ones who were not using the gadgets/toolbar.
There were many controversies over the Alexa ranking and many have indicated that Alexa ranking is completely inaccurate method for measuring the website. In 2007 Michael Arrington founder and co editor of TechCrunch has proved that Alexa ranking is completely wrong and said that it can be influenced by the external factors, which were apart from traffic of the website.
Although Alexa is the useless way to measure the web traffic, unfortunately lots of webmaster heavily relies on it for measuring the popularity of the website and many ad networks consider Alexa ranking for estimating the value of the website.
I never cared about Alexa ranking but really have fun in tweaking the ranking. Stay tuned by subscribing to our feeds for updates on “Tips to increase your Alexa ranking”
What do you think about Alexa Ranking? I would like hear about your personal experiences with Alexa.
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yes, most of the webmasters says Alexa Ranking is not accurate but all company checks website ranking in Alexa before buying any Ads spot.
Free Vector Graphics´s last blog ..Popular Brands That Are Using WordPress
The best way to lower your Alexa ranking is to use following two things.
Use Alexa Toolbar in your FF or IE and set your website as Homepage.
Use Alexa Sidebar Widget in your website.
Mad Geek @beingPC´s last blog ..Complete Hostgator Review
Alexa is a totally wrong way to think of your website’s effectiveness. Its fun though and allows you a lot of bragging rights.
this is the bottom line, isn’t it. It truly gives the bragging rights, and once someone has his own ranks in millions, and starts saying how he gets thousands of visitors everyday… you know how few will believe him
overall, its a flawed metric but it surely is fun
Everyday Techies´s last blog ..How to Delete Internet History
Yes, it is fun! Alexa.com should put a disclaimer on its website warning people that their data is “For Amusement / Entertainment Use Only” as Alexa rankings CAN be easily manipulated.
I think alexa ranking is completely wrong. My video blog just3gp has 5000 monthly uniques and it has alexa ranking over 450k and i my other blog which only has 2500 monthly visitors has the alexa ranking of under 100k. so alexa is completly wrong. it has nothing to do with traffic. Its more depend on alexa toolbar and widgets.
Loveish´s last blog ..Pope Tells Preists : We Must Blog
Nice post bro… even though the Alexa ranks are false, we have no choice but to work to increase them because most of the advertisers first looks at the Alexa rank before giving their advertisements! And i never knew that the Alexa gadget can increase our ranks!
need to put it right now!
Pubudu Kodikara´s last blog ..Meebo Bar : Now You Can Chat With Your Friends Within Tech Hamlet
Alexa is being noticed a lot recently around the blogs I’ve been visiting.
About my experience with Alexa, my rank has gone from 14M to 3M in just a couple of weeks, I must be doing something right, I guess!
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Alexa rank is not the correct metrics to rank your website. It can be altered very easily. It just makes us feel better if we are in the top 100k
Rohit Sane´s last blog ..How to Make your Blog/Website more User-Friendly?
I stop using Alexa toolbar longtime so as gadget. I only consider Google Analyst as my traffic measurement tool and as my site is search engine driven I don’t care about Alexa. Unless someone think about private advertising there is no need to think about Alexa.
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the problem is that even if you stop using alexa, your readers and visitors and advertisers will keep checking it… and hence the value of your blog in your readers/visitors eyes will grow or fall based on how good your external stats are, and alexa ranks is quite a popular external metric, whether or not its accurate…
Everyday Techies´s last blog ..How to Delete Internet History
I think alexa ranking still tell us something — tell us which blog have great traffic. It always can assume that the site with alexa rank below 10k is popular site.
Dana @ Blogging Update´s last blog ..My English is Poor Enough, Therefore I Blog
Now Alexa is updating every day, I think every blogger will trust Alexa rank again.
Hernan@TechFC.com´s last blog ..Try dual booting Android and Maemo on Nokia N900
It’s good to have a good ranking
your ranking is great.
Though personally I don’t care much about Alexa, my advertisers care about it and hence I like to brag about my ranking
TechChunks´s last blog ..How to Dominate Café World in Facebook: Biggest List of Café World Tricks, Cheat Codes, Hacks And Tips
Yesterday Alexa site was down for more than 2 hours. Alexa is a good source to know the traffic.
Yeah! Good Info for beginners!
Thanks for The Post
Chethan´s last blog ..10 Ways to make your blog readers happy!
Im not convinced with the Alexa Links, they are the most inappropriate data that is collected by Alexa. And I personally feel its not the good source for info abt the number of visitors we get.
Ramkumar´s last blog ..Software Review BS Player
Good introduction to Alexa – nice post. To be honest, I’ve never paid it much regard.
Slow Startup´s last blog ..Slow Startup? Get the fix!
After reading your post, I am clear about that the alexa ranking is all about and would surely wait for tips on increasing alexa ranking.Thanks for sharing dude.
Yogesh Mankani´s last blog ..My sweet and sour memories of Republic Day
Nice info. Thanks for the share.
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I recently noticed my Alexa rank in my home country dramatically dropped. But my rank internationally keeps on improving. I still don’t know the impacts of these.
Rian´s last blog ..Shabu Shabu Eat All You Can at Tong Yang
Tremendous article. Complete Definition of Alexa’s abstract is defined ova here. Thanx for share bro
I prefer Google page rank over alexa any day.
Rahul Hanchinamane´s last blog ..De-clutterize your desktop
This lacks of the option to opt out.
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Clearly Alexa had been very useful for some and never set aside the value of it. This is also figures that most webmaster are also looking at. There are many ways on tweaking traffic and that is the best thing in getting more viewers and readers on the site.
Great article Rajesh.
Even though the ranking mechanism of Alexa is greatly debated, people still value it’s ranking. I read somewhere that Web Masters of South Asian based websites value Alexa ranking and tweak their web sites more than US or Europe based web site admins.
Prasad @ A4AAPL´s last blog ..Avatar is officially the highest grossing film worldwide
Nice article, no external measure can be accurate, though speaking of alexa ranks, its very much flawed. But advertisers like it, and atleast it can be used to make out a rough idea about the traffic of a site, after all, if a site/blog is ranking in millions, it will surely not have much traffic
Everyday Techies´s last blog ..How to Delete Internet History
Alexa is a pretty useless tool since it’s so biased and inaccurate. I don’t take it into account.
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Thanks for the post about Alexa rank. I’ve been hearing a lot about this lately and I’m wondering if anyone know which specific advertisers use this to determine ads. I’ve never heard of someone being turned down by an advertiser because of their Alexa rank. Let me know if you know anyone in that situation.
I’ve done a few Alexa reviews for other sites and I think it helps too.
Thanks.
@Ileane
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Alexa ranks sucks because it has its own algorithm, no one can understand this. It calculations mainly based on the number of people installed the alexa toolabar. Hope it will add something value to this article
http://infoedutech.com/alexa-works/
Vivek @ infoedutech´s last blog ..Decrease Google Page Rank By Using WordPress All in One SEO Plugin
@RajeshKanuri: Nice article got good info about Alexa ranking, is there any site like Alexa?
compete is a similar site which ranks websites but alexa is the market leader…