Increasing Alexa Rank - A Joint Experiment
I have 2 sites now so I can see first-hand how inaccurate Alexa Ranks can be, which are supposed to measure the level of traffic a site gets. The inaccuracies are created because Alexa relies on measuring how many users who have installed the Alexa IE toolbar.
For many sites these inaccuracies aren’t an issue, but many advertising services like Text-Link Ads and ReviewMe, as well as potential advertisers use these stats to gauge the value of advertising on a site, so monitoring your Alexa Rank can be important.I’ve become a bit frustrated with the fact that my Alexa Rank (currently 26,070) is lower than some sites where based on Google Analytics data I have more traffic. So, I’ve decided to try a few of the methods that DoshDosh have suggested to improve Alexa Rank, and it’d be good if as many of my readers as possible took part to see it works for their sites as well.
Maki listed 20 steps to Increase Alexa Rank, but to take part in the experiment you only need to try 1 or more of the steps below (remember to record your Alexa Rank before you start):
- Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension and set your blog as your homepage. This is the most basic step
- Add an Alexa rank widget on your website
- Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar. This includes friends, fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers
- Use Alexa redirects on your website URL. Try this: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.connectedinternet.co.uk. Replace connectedinternet.co.uk with the URL for your website. Leave this redirected URL in blog comments as well as forum signatures. This redirect will count a unique IP address once a day so clicking it multiple times won’t help
If sufficient numbers of your readers join the experiment and follow steps 1&3 then your Alexa Rank should definitely increase. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone sees any improvement from adding the Alexa rank widget.
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Comment by Thilak on 26 March 2007:
I’m with you, I have already installed Search Status Plugin, long long time ago
Comment by engtech on 26 March 2007:
encouraging your readers to use the Alexa toolbar increases your rank because, well, they’re reading your site with it.
If they don’t use the toolbar then your rank doesn’t benefit from those readers.
The redirect thing is to tell Alexa “look, I’m getting traffic!!!” (it doesn’t use the toolbar), which only goes to show how dumb the entire Alexa traffic rating system is (much like Technorati rank).
Comment by Mark from Bloglyne.com on 26 March 2007:
What does encouraging people to use the Alexa toolbar have to do with your own traffic rank? Is it like an affiliate link that if they click through your link and install the toolbar then you get a “multiplier” to your rank? If that is the case then the rank is completely bogus…
Comment by engtech on 25 March 2007:
I think it would count as a link to alexa — but that doesn’t really matter because all of the comments are usually nofollowed anyways.
Comment by bill on 25 March 2007:
Tip number 9 caught my eye as well. What had me worried was this - would that redirect count as a valid link to my site when Google and the like were indexing … or would it count as a link to Alexa? I just don’t know enough about redirects and traffic ranking to gamble on it yet.
I did install the Search Status extension though. I’ll also add my current stats to the frey…
date: 3/25/07
rank: 441,229
Let’s see where we are in a week.
Comment by Everton on 25 March 2007:
According to my research today yes - anything that asks Alexa ‘whats the rank of this page?’ does apparently.
I’ve also implemented #9 from Maki’s list in my footer, although I’m not too sure about this one:
Comment by engtech on 25 March 2007:
Does the Firefox SearchStatus extension work for increasing Alexa rank of the sites you visit, or is it only the IE toolbar?
date: 26/03/07
Rank: 40,456
Comment by Mr.Byte on 25 March 2007:
I think I should start first by downloading alexa toolbar. But I really dont understand the concept of measuring the traffic by alexa as not even half the people who use internet will have alexa toolbar.
Comment by TJP on 25 March 2007:
I read this post as well. Lots of good info.
Right now, my rank is 192,150. Let’s see if these tips work.
Comment by Everton on 25 March 2007:
Ok, I’ll kick it off:
date: 25/03/07
Rank: 26024