What is Alexa Ranking?

This question still bothers many bloggers: «What means Alexa ranking?», «What is Alexa ranking?»… I have met so-o-o many blogs arguing on this topic, that it is time for me to explain the value of Alexa web ranking, because I cannot imagine my blog’s niche without it.

The shortest definition of Alexa ranking is the potential of blog or website in numbers. That’s it. You can stop reading here. :)

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Still reading? Then let me show you more detailed solutions on 5 problematic topics like:

1. How Alexa gets the traffic data of your site?
2. Is there any way to prevent your site’s traffic from being ranked by Alexa?
3. How you should be treating Alexa web ranking?
4. Why Alexa does not relate to Google Page Rank?
5. How to improve Alexa ranking and does Alexa toolbar improve it or not?

Before I will start answering the above questions, I should also mention the fact that many people ignore Alexa ranking, do not trust it and even hate it, because of its toolbar, which was considered by their anti-virus software as a spyware or a virus.

The summarized answer from the folks from Alexa on this problem was the following:

No, the Alexa Toolbar is not spyware.
Spyware is defined as hidden software that is installed on your computer without your knowledge.
It generally collects your personal information for advertising purposes, and provides you with no value in return.
The Alexa Toolbar is only installed when a user chooses to download it – it is not installed without your knowledge. The Toolbar is not hidden, it is prominently displayed at the top of your browser. In order to fill the Toolbar with relevant information, the URL of the page you’re on is transmitted to us and we return related information for that page.
The Alexa Toolbar can be turned off at any time.
If you feel that the features of the Alexa Toolbar are not of value to you, the Toolbar is easily uninstalled using Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel of Windows.

This is it. Just add Alexa toolbar to your anti-virus software’s “trust list”, if such is present.

Now let’s get back to the 5 problematic questions.

How Alexa collects traffic data of your website or blog?

In the beginning Alexa Inc. was able to collect your traffic data only if you had installed their toolbar. Now, as you may have noticed, you do not have any toolbar installed and you still can see, that Alexa is ranking your blog or website.

Since early 1996 they have started using Alexa Crawl system, which works just like any other crawling bot.. e.g. google-bot. Currently Alexa’s crawling bots (or “crawlers”.. or “robots”) are gathering approximately 1.6 Terabytes (1600 gigabytes) of Web content per day. That is a huge number…

By today Alexa has gathered over 4.5 Billion pages from over 16 million sites, which is why if your site is only several days old, your Alexa traffic rank starts with ~16,000,000.

In other words, there are 2 ways, which Alexa is using to track your traffic:

1. Alexa toolbar, which you should install first. It gives you much more accurate data, than crawler’s work. So you better install it today. Download Alexa toolbar here.
2. The second way is Alexa Crawl system, which finds your site through external links pointing at you.

How to prevent Alexa ranking?

This is a very logical question. Of course, when your blog or website is still too young to show its “great” traffic data to the entire world, you want to hide it. This is why you may want to prevent your site from Alexa ranking.

In order to do that, first of all, you shouldn’t install Alexa toolbar. Uninstall it, if you already have it.

The second thing you want to do is to modify your robots.txt file:

1. You can allow or disallow specific robots from visiting part or all of your site. Alexa’s crawler identifies itself as ia_archiver, and so to allow ia_archiver to visit (while preventing all others), your robots.txt file should look like this:

   User-agent: ia_archiver
   Disallow:

2. To prevent ia_archiver from visiting (while allowing all others), your robots.txt file should look like this:

   User-agent: ia_archiver
   Disallow: /

That’s it. Only 2 ways. “Noindex” meta tag, probably, will not help you, because Alexa doesn’t mention it.

Treating Alexa ranking

I am not going to teach you how to treat alexa ranking, because it depends on your site’s needs. I will only share my own opinion on this problem.

Alexa traffic rank is my number 1 traffic analysis tool, because it really shows me the potential of a blog. It helps me to decide, whether to deal with the given website or not.

Alexa ranking can give you the general idea of successfulness of some site after 1 week.

Say, on monday I see, that the site’s Alexa rank is ~500k. Then.. I check its stats in the end of the week, and wow.. Alexa has changed to ~495k. This means, that the site is on the right road.

However, if Alexa has changed to, say, ~510k after the whole week, it means, that the author is not promoting his site anymore or doing it not properly. Moreover, I can say, that such site is getting ~15/20 unique visitors per day.. and it’s falling down.

Alexa does not relate to Google page rank

This is true, because Alexa uses its own crawler called ia_archiver. Google crawler’s name is… Googlebot. They are totally different, though they have similar algorithms, which is why a lot of bloggers and webmasters think that they somehow relate to each other.

To make it easier to understand:

1. Using Alexa, you can appraise site’s daily traffic;
2. However, with the help of Google page rank you can decide, if the outcoming links from some site are quality or not. Though you also should consider many many more factors, like keywords, dofollow/nofollow tags etc. Quality links improve your SERP.. simply reminding :)

How to improve Alexa traffic ranking?

Have you felt that?..

The question has the answer in it.

You need to get more traffic on your daily basis. But do not panic.. everything has its own time for it. If you are blogging consistently and promoting your stuff, your traffic ranking will be going up with each day. It only depends on how well you are doing those two things.

Well, as I have mentioned above, to get more accurate traffic data from Alexa you might need to install Alexa toolbar. But note.. it does not improve your traffic ranking, it only shows it more accurately.

For instance, when your watch is lagging for 5 minutes and you fix them (installing some toolbar :)… they become accurate. But the fact is the fact – they would have shown, for example 6:45 pm, anyway.

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I think I have defined the meaning of Alexa ranking and have explained its ranking purpose.

Web sources that were used except the mentioned above: Alexa ranking – does it matter? and Technology of Alexa.

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Video Dessert: «Stop The Alexa and PageRank Obsession!»

Lisa Irby explains why you should stop being obsessed by Alexa traffic rank, PageRank and so on.