Alexa Ranking: What is it and should I care?

What is an Alexa Ranking?

Alexa ranking is a website ranking system that gives a website a numerical value in relation to all other websites. It basically ranks the best site (best in Alexa’s opinion) as number 1 and then the second best site gets the ranking of 2, and so forth. There can be only one site with each numerical ranking. The smaller the Alexa ranking number the better. At the time of this writing, the top Alexa ranked site is Google.com, but you can check the current top Alexa sites here.

The exact methods Alexa uses to rank sites is a closely kept secret, so all information is subject to error. Also, Alexa is changing their algorithms as a course of doing business, trying to take advantage of the changing landscape of the web, current technology, and evolving web user habits. Alexa, Yahoo, Bing, Google, and all other search engine and ranking systems out there keep their methods secret, so webmasters do not ‘game’ the system, or unfairly tweak their rankings.

Should you care about your website’s Alexa ranking?

All it takes is a little research to tell you that Alexa is a flawed ranking method. It only counts site visits if the visitor has the Alexa browser add-on, and typically only technically savvy people and people managing websites will have the Alexa browser add-on. If you are interested you can get the add-on here at the Alexa site. After reading this article you will be better equipped to make the decision on whether to use the Alexa toolbar add-on or not. I have it loaded on all of my computers and I have not had any trouble with it, unlike some browser add-ons.

I can see only two clear reasons why you would want your Alexa ranking to be low. Remember that with Alexa lower is better. So, if you or your website does not fall into one of these two categories I would not worry about your Alexa ranking:

* Website advertising income
* Webmaster focused websites

Website advertising income

Unfortunately there are some website income generation methods that are only available to those sites that are ranked better than a million. Also, the better your ranking is the more your site’s space is worth to advertisers, which in turn increases your website’s revenue potential. So, if you want to tap into those revenue advertisement options you need to get your Alexa rank up. If that is not of interest to you then you probably do not need to worry about your Alexa ranking.

Webmaster focused websites

Also, if your web content targets technically savvy people you may want to pursue a higher Alexa ranking. Serious webmasters typically have the Alexa toolbar so they can keep track of their site compared to their competition. Thus, if your content is geared toward website creation, management, and income generation then the Alexa number will be a good indication if you are attracting enough of the correct viewers, because your audience will have the Alexa toolbar, or should have it – if they don’t you should be telling them they need it.

The Alexa toolbar has a search capability built into it as well, which means that those that use the toolbar may use it for performing web searches, and you can bet that the Alexa toolbar search engine relies on the Alexa ranking to order the search results. When it comes to search engine results the closer to the front page the better. This clearly makes the Alexa ranking valuable for webmasters.

But, what if I do care about my Alexa ranking?

If you do care about your Alexa ranking there are a few things you can do to increase it. There are also a lot of articles out there on the web about the Alexa ranking. Many of them are several years old and thus do not have accurate information. As of April 2010 my information is more accurate than most, and if I knew of better information I would point you to it. I had to weed out a lot of outdated, misguided, and just plain stupid Alexa information before I could write this article. In fact, if you do a Google search on Alexa and Alexa rankings, most of the top articles are no longer accurate. A lot of them were not accurate when they were written! I discuss tips and myths for increasing your Alexa ranking in my article Truth about Methods to raise Alexa Ranking.

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Author: Jeff Harris
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