I just briefly looked at the article "Alexa Ranking - A Web Site Monetization Strategy?"  and would like to comment based on my own experience.

I built and ran a motorcycle site in the Philippines that, according to Alexa became the 5th most popular site in the Philippines, and around 14,000 worldwide.  I stayed in the Philippines top 25 for a long time.

Then quite suddenly other sites appeared and shot up into the top places.  One was a average size hotel and another a small web site company.  How could these small sites suddenly, within a few weeks, be getting more traffic than my site that had 30,000 active forum users and was getting over 7 million page views per month?  Other small sites then starting appearing in the top 25 as I was pushed back.

I did some checking and found that this coincided with the time the Alexa cheat software became available for PCs.  I contacted Alexa but they were not interested.

I had been promoting Alexa heavily with banners etc but at this point removed them all and concentrated on Google.  getting people to use the toolbar may bring in more traffic but I believe the ranking is now useless.

I definitely agree with you on many levels…and much like Google toolbar PR think Alexa rankings are useless- to those that are in the know at least….

…however on the other hand a lot of people who are “less informed on the subject” put great weight on Alexa rankings and in certain aspects a lucrative Alexa rankings can work heavily in you favor…

One such example I have experience with is when it comes to selling a site- I run a few sites…a few too many in fact and between SR a couple other decent sized ones have little time to maintain some of them properly- so I have looked at selling some of the ones I cannot grow as quickly as they should (due to my lack of time)…

In many cases, serious potential buyers (people with $ in hand ready to make the purchase) ask as one of their first questions what the particular site’s Alexa rank is. In these instances, these potential buyers placed a lot of their decisions on this. Be right or wrong, it is important to them and as a buyer they are right… but hey- people make big (and costly decisions) all the time without the proper info.

Just my 2c on Alexa

BTW: here is the link to the article you mention above: How Important Is Alexa Ranking?

And here is a discussion on manipulating alexa ranks (in which I agree with many of your points)

Hi Sky ...... it is a screwy metric of little value ( to professionals at least).

As Nic has eluded to it is all but useless but to those in the site selling game ( and some text link advertisers). Generally speaking the Alexa tolbar never really cught on with the general public and so most of the folks with it installed were marketers and webmasters. Obviously the metrics we really want to know about is from the consumers (general public) - this was the first major problem with it.

Secondly, as you noted, applications abound for inflating the rankings so the trustability of their metrics suffered more.

It's good that you are now watching more important areas such as Search rankings, Google in aprticular. Even here though a potential buyer can be mislead - Not all top Google rankings are created equal - what I mean by that is a top ranking doesn't always mean gobs of traffic.... and even Gobs of traffic from a ranking doesn't ensure conversions.

I rank #1 for the term - internet business developer - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en& … +developer  that has total results of 331 000 000

and #4 for the term - business developer - http://www.google.com/search?source=ig& … +developer which has total results of 663 000 000

... strangely... neither produce much in the way of traffic, regardless of the appearance of being a quality ranking.


In the end a business is a business. If you buy one based on anything but Profit and Loss statements, your setting yerself up for a fall. At very least, I want to see traffic data to know what potential a site has for turning a profit.

TheGypsy wrote:

I rank #1 for the term - internet business developer - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en& … +developer  that has total results of 331 000 000... strangely... neither produce much in the way of traffic, regardless of the appearance of being a quality ranking.

Hehehe…sorry kind of off-topic and I don’t want to hijack this thread but find that amusing…I too find one of my sites it #1 for a term that produces over 300million results…seems impressive (mush like a great Alexa rank) but then again doesn’t produce much traffic  so it's basically useless (just like a great Alexa rank may also be) [/offtopic]

edit: in the end it's not how many results are produced for a term or what measure Alexa ranks your site but how well you rank for terms that potential visitors may be searching for with some decent degree of frequency that really affects your traffic stats

Yeah, it was experiences like that and on client sites that taught me the value of researching target terms instead of simply going after what they ( or I) felt was the right terms to chase.

It makes me giggle on thread where people say the way to judge an expert SEO was looking at what terms he had gotten top 10 rankings for..... a top 10, even one that 'looks' valuable...ain't worth squat without the traffic....... I am on page 3 right now for 'learn SEO' ( I haven't done much yet to actually build links) and it is bringing in more traffic than the 2 aforementioned terms.....

... it's all about the traffic and ultimately, conversions..... all Top 10 rankings were not created equal.....

I got a call the other day from one of our account managers regarding our Alexa Rankings. He'd seen on an industry (our side of affiliate marketing) all the alexa rankings of every site like ours. I think we were about 44th out of 200 (ish)

Panic was in his voice.

So i told him it was all crap, didn't mean a thing. I know for a fact that if the rankings were actual customer ratings, we'd be top 3. and anyway, we'd earnt him a couple of grand bonus this month, so why was he worried?

All having a decent ranking means is that you've had x amount of visits to your site by idiots who were stupid enough to install the Alexa SpyWare.

Might stick a big "Download AdAware spyware remover" ad on every page and watch our Alexa rankings drop as our members realise their alexa toolbars are poison.

Or

According to this page of complete and utter garbage, I could install a script that would artificially inflate my rankings and if I got my Alexa rankings up, I'd own every search engine available!!!

Which way do I go...................................?

griffinsbridge wrote:

I got a call the other day from one of our account managers regarding our Alexa Rankings. He'd seen on an industry (our side of affiliate marketing) all the alexa rankings of every site like ours. I think we were about 44th out of 200 (ish)

Panic was in his voice.

So i told him it was all crap, didn't mean a thing. I know for a fact that if the rankings were actual customer ratings, we'd be top 3. and anyway, we'd earnt him a couple of grand bonus this month, so why was he worried?

All having a decent ranking means is that you've had x amount of visits to your site by idiots who were stupid enough to install the Alexa SpyWare.

Might stick a big "Download AdAware spyware remover" ad on every page and watch our Alexa rankings drop as our members realise their alexa toolbars are poison.

Or

According to this page of complete and utter garbage, I could install a script that would artificially inflate my rankings and if I got my Alexa rankings up, I'd own every search engine available!!!

Which way do I go...................................?

I could never perpetuate garbage (no wonder I am broke...damned ethics).... so I would go to the end of the earth to explain reality.....

PLEASE HELP ME INSTALL MY ALEXA TOOLBAR!!!! Okay, done shouting. As noted in this thread, it can be the Perceived 'value' of an Alexa ranking that generates ad revenue. That happened to me when trying to get a former advertiser to renew their account. It just Totally blew me away when they demanded a reduced ad rate because my Alexa ranking was in the tank. Hell, maybe I should have charged them 10 times as much when my rankings were at 13,500!!!!!!! I was more popular than Mastercard or Visa!!!! LOL!!! That was prior to their figuring out that all those daily views by one person probably should count as just 1 view. Even after that change, I was at 32,000. Then I changed laptops and have not been able to install the Alexa Toolbar since. dammit. Tim

Cbeach1 wrote:

PLEASE HELP ME INSTALL MY ALEXA TOOLBAR!!!! Okay, done shouting. As noted in this thread, it can be the Perceived 'value' of an Alexa ranking that generates ad revenue. That happened to me when trying to get a former advertiser to renew their account. It just Totally blew me away when they demanded a reduced ad rate because my Alexa ranking was in the tank. Hell, maybe I should have charged them 10 times as much when my rankings were at 13,500!!!!!!! I was more popular than Mastercard or Visa!!!! LOL!!! That was prior to their figuring out that all those daily views by one person probably should count as just 1 view. Even after that change, I was at 32,000. Then I changed laptops and have not been able to install the Alexa Toolbar since. dammit. Tim

Uhhhh.. you should really be talking to your site managers/SEO consultants about such things.. Oh wait..crap.. that's me ain't it??

I will take care of those fellas for U in the future brother. We shall show them WHY Alexa is useless and WHAT metrics they chould actually be worried about.... and then we will take their cash.. brruu ha h ah ahha ha

Tim, Tim, TIm.... U gotta run that stuff by me man... I fix U up Big time.... he he... we are gonna KILL the world in 08 my friend... yer gonna be one of our Glowing case studies in using the team here to kick butt..... he he... I am gonna make an example outta ya

TheGypsy wrote:

Uhhhh.. you should really be talking to your site managers/SEO consultants about such things.. Oh wait..crap.. that's me ain't it??

I will take care of those fellas for U in the future brother. We shall show them WHY Alexa is useless and WHAT metrics they chould actually be worried about.... and then we will take their cash.. brruu ha h ah ahha ha

Tim, Tim, TIm.... U gotta run that stuff by me man... I fix U up Big time.... he he... we are gonna KILL the world in 08 my friend... yer gonna be one of our Glowing case studies in using the team here to kick butt..... he he... I am gonna make an example outta ya

well, i thought i should do a few things on my own. hopefully it's okay that i've tried to get some very relavent links to the site??!!

ps: we haven't even Touched hotel rates that i have available to me yet. (TA better take note.) tim

So,
alexa toolbar is a spyware right! OK ok!
tell me, how many of you have "search status" mozila plugin installed!
waiting for your replies!

harmu.com wrote:

So,
alexa toolbar is a spyware right! OK ok!
tell me, how many of you have "search status" mozila plugin installed!
waiting for your replies!

wats dat muppet? whatcha on about?

waazza Search status plugin???