What Is Alexa Rank?

What Is Alexa Rank?

Ever since I’ve begun blogging, I continuously hear about Alexa Ranking. At first, I really didn’t know what Alexa was, so I used my nifty little friend called Google. Alexa is a company that is owned by Amazon, and has become quite popular for the trafficking ranking service over at the Alexa website. If you’re a member of any big name forum, like Digital Point, you probably hear about Alexa Ranking over and over, and how you need a very good ranking in order to make good money online. For those who are blogging or running any other type of website, it is important to know a few things about Alexa and the service they offer.

Alexa reports three things – reach, page views, and overall rank. Reach is basically the ratio of web surfers visiting your site. It is given in a percentage. The Reach is given as “reach per million users” meaning that if you are given a reach of ten, it means that ten out of every million surfers comes to your website. Page views is exactly as the name states – the average number of pages that a web surfer looks at when visiting your website. Obviously, a site with more content and visitors is usually going to have more page views. Put two and two together, and you have probably discovered that the Alexa rank your site is given is based on the reach and page views. The lower the number is (your ranking) the more value is given to your site. So yes, an Alexa Rank of 1 (Google) is better than an Alexa Rank of 1,000,000. These numbers are reported on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, and on for three month averages. So one may ask themselves – how does Alexa acquire all this data?

Every day, Alexa gathers the number of visitors and page views for all webmasters using the Alexa Toolbar. You can download and install the Alexa Toolbar through the Alexa website. Needless to say, only those visitors that have the Alexa Toolbar installed will help improve your Alexa Ranking. Only a small percentage of web surfers have the toolbar installed, thus, you have probably figured out that the ranking giving by Alexa is not all that accurate.

If you are looking to have accurate stats, to see how your website is actually progressing, you should not depend on Alexa. If you have been working on your site extremely hard, but still have a horrible Alexa Ranking, do not stress. Furthermore, for those considering having accurate stats to see how their website is doing, software such a Google analytics should be use. Not to say Alexa Ranking is a number pulled out of the sky, but there are simply too many variables making it not the most accurate number. So yes, if you have a good Alexa rank, it is something you can show off and likely use to pull in a bit of extra money for advertisement purposes. On the other hand, if your rank is outright crummy, do not sit at your computer and stress – it’s not a big deal. Simply said, if you are looking for something to show off, Alexa Ranking is perfect. Otherwise, it is not all that important, and as a webmaster, you should put your time into other aspects of your website.