Does Alexa Ranking Even Matter?
Last week Alexa came out with a new ranking system, so I figured now is as good a time as ever to share my thoughts about whether or not Alexa is a valuable tool or just a bunch of hype.
It all started back in 1998, when Alexa launched their first toolbar which allowed people to see the popularity (Alexa ranking) of any given website they visited. When a surfer had the toolbar installed, Alexa would track the sites they visited and compare this data with other surfers to determine which sites on the internet were most popular. Basically, if someone had the toolbar installed and visited your website, it would improve your site’s ranking.
Since, I’m guessing, a majority of casual internet users didn’t use the Alexa toolbar, this ranking was somewhat skewed and flawed as it couldn’t possibly record all traffic on the entire internet. The data was only coming from a limited amount of toolbar users who probably frequented the same sites again and again.
Back in the early days of Alexa (and up until rather recently) it was also very, very easy to artificially improve your rankings. In it’s early stages, Alexa didn’t count hits based on unique IP, so you could visit your site multiple times daily with the toolbar installed and acheive a better rank. Some people even wrote scripts that would refresh their homepage every minute or so to make it look like their site had more traffic than it actually did. Now, Alexa has since improved their algorithim to count unique IPs as one visit only, so this gaming method doesn’t work anymore unless someone has access to a bunch of unique IPs.
But don’t be so quick to brush Alexa off because of it’s rocky past. They seem to be getting better and more accurate than ever before, and that’s good news for people who closely monitor their rank on a daily basis.
With the new algorithim, Alexa claims it now draws it’s traffic from several different sources to give a more accurate reading. As a result, you’ve probably noticed your Alexa rankings change dramatically over the past week (for better or worse) as this new system is slowly being put into place. Alexa also claims they are not only updating current ranks, but they are updating historical data as well. Since your ranking is really made up of present AND past ranks, this should get pretty interesting in the coming weeks.
While I still feel Alexa isn’t a completely foolproof way to measure the popularity of a site, I do think it’s a valuable tool and probably one of the best at what it sets out to do. With every new algorithim, they are definitely improving and evolving, so I believe Alexa rank may live up to it’s legendary hype eventually.
A lot of people who buy and sell websites, ad space, and traffic still use Alexa rank as a way to gauge a site’s worth, so it is important in that respect. It’s pretty commonplace for people to only buy sites with good Alexa ranks or only buy ads on sites that have great rankings. Like it or not, your site is constantly being judged by that little blue bar.
Based on the changes Alexa is making now and the momentum they’re gaining in the tech savvy communities, I have a feeling they may become more important than ever before.
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Cool blog dude.