Internet Marketing Tycoon

**onspider** · 10-01-2005, 11:24 AM

Hello Everyone,

I just had a few questions about these Alexa ratings that I have been hearing alot about recently.

1. What is considered a good rating?

2. What exactly do they mean?

Thank you for your time and sorry if these questions seem stupid.

**CAL** · 10-02-2005, 02:01 AM

I dont think anyone really pays that much attention to alexa ratings. Well, at least I dont....

To answer your questions...

1. Its hard to say what is a good rating is. The top 500 alexa sites can be found here: http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500

2. Doesnt mean much. Firstly a visitor to your site has to have the alexa toolbar installed. Therefore the listing is only by those who have alexa installed on their PC. I dont, and millions other dont either, so it never will be a true reflection of your site.

YOur questions arent stupid. No such thing as a stupid question!

**chrishirst** · 10-02-2005, 04:46 AM

1. Who cares

2. Absolutely nothing.

As CAL says, Alexa rankings are only based on users with the Alexa toolbar installed. more than 90% of surfers probably don't have it.

Do you have the alexa toolbar yourself?

**onspider** · 10-02-2005, 06:38 AM

No I dont have the toolbar.

**jeffnudd** · 10-09-2005, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

1. Who cares

2. Absolutely nothing.

As CAL says, Alexa rankings are only based on users with the Alexa toolbar installed. more than 90% of surfers probably don't have it.

Do you have the alexa toolbar yourself?

That is a cracking point well made.

I was worried about the alexa rank, but i quickly learned that its traffic that counts not the ranking :-)

**HaRRo** · 10-09-2005, 08:46 PM

agreed alexa is imaginary and a guess

**trafficman** · 10-14-2005, 11:49 AM

Well, i do not agree with what you all said.

How do you think polls are usually done and how relevant they are ?
I compare Alexa to a kind of poll which classify the popularity of websites.

I actually use Alexa all the time and i really find it usefull for referencing purposes.

A good Alexa ranking is under 50000 (That is representing the 50000 top traffic websites in the world)

I think Alexa is much more relevant than the Google PR

**brocktoon93** · 10-14-2005, 11:17 PM

Google page rank can be faked.

Alexa ratings are useful to me when looking for sites to exchange links with. When I exchange links with a site over 300,000 alexa, I basically will not get return hits from them.

**chrishirst** · 10-15-2005, 03:43 AM

Quote:

Google page rank can be faked.

But it's much less work to fake Alexa ratings.

**monkey** · 10-15-2005, 08:35 AM

you can fake both ratings. but frankly if you aren't faking your alexa rating they can be useful as a webmaster. i wont put all my faith in alexa, but the site is run like any other type of poll where they gather a sample, and come to a conclusion based on the sample. sure there are sites that should maybe be ranked higher or lower, but once you get into the top 5000 sites i feel its fairly accurate.

**eHits** · 10-24-2005, 07:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by monkey

you can fake both ratings.

Monkey,

Apparantly you cannot fake an Alexa rating. According to i-faker's FAQ,

Quote:

> Alexa data servers change every day and there is no post command
> to submit a value through its XML feed (Used by the toolbar).
> Beware of ANY application that claims to increase or boost your
> alexa rank. It is, for a fact, IMPOSSIBLE.

If you know of a way of faking an Alexa rating I'd love to know--would you PM me and let me know.

Thanks, Mark

**monkey** · 10-24-2005, 08:53 PM

no i'd rather not share how to cheat with you. its wrong.

**someguy** · 10-25-2005, 04:58 AM

I'll explain my problem with Alexa through a real example. This example carries across pretty much all the sites I am involved with (including those with lower Alexa ratings) - but is particularly striking with these sites.

Two "sister sites" doing a very similar job. One site has 70% more traffic that the other, but an Alexa ranking almost twice as high.

The reason is simple: They are tarted at silghtly different audiences and the site with the lower Alexa ranking targets an audience that is more likely to install the tool bar.

A while back we compared the Alexa ranks of the 20 busiest sites we look after and the ranks were almost random. The only useful metric the Alexa data gave us is the likelihood of users of a particular site using Alexa - which is useful in knowing whether it is worth "influencing" your rankings (which is not hard).

**chrishirst** · 10-25-2005, 08:50 AM

impossible to "fake" alexa rank? what rubbish!

install the alexa toolbar, visit the site several times a day.

Why not get the family and friends to join in the game for an even quicker result

**someguy** · 10-25-2005, 11:33 AM

Quote:

Why not get the family and friends to join in the game for an even quicker result

Or even put a download link on your site!

**eHits** · 10-25-2005, 01:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

impossible to "fake" alexa rank? what rubbish!

install the alexa toolbar, visit the site several times a day.

LOL! Analogy: People are discussing "making money" and someone jumps in and says you can make money by picking up spare change left in payphones.

Come on!
What is implied in this thread by faking an Alexa rating is getting a halfway respectible Alexa rating.

chrishirst, your method--visiting your own site a few times (or even a few dozen times) a day--might get your Alexa rating improved from like uh 2,533,400 to like 2,522,100

**eHits** · 10-25-2005, 01:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by monkey

you can fake both ratings.

Quote:

Originally Posted by eHits

Apparently you cannot fake an Alexa rating. According to i-faker's FAQ,

Quote:

> Alexa data servers change every day and there is no post command
> to submit a value through its XML feed (Used by the toolbar).
> Beware of ANY application that claims to increase or boost your
> alexa rank. It is, for a fact, IMPOSSIBLE.

If you know of a way of faking an Alexa rating I'd love to know--would you PM me and let me know.

Thanks, Mark

Quote:

Originally Posted by monkey

no i'd rather not share how to cheat with you. its wrong.

Monkey,

Regardless of whether or not you'd like to share this insider knowledge you claim to have, you don't know how to do it. So don't tell us all here that you know of some secret method.

Bottom line, there is no software to do it, and you cannot write you own custom software to do it. (if it were possible, then the whole Alexa rating system would be compromised by virtually everyone in like one week, duh!) I'm 99.99% sure it cannot be done, other than by brute force direct methods--like hiring 100 offshore workers for 37 cents/hour to install the Alexa bar and then surf your site repeatedly all day long thru an ip number rotation proxy.

Mark

**etech-martin** · 10-25-2005, 01:51 PM

IMO, Alexa rankings has no meaning unless you need to get how many webmasters click on their own site along with having Alexa toolbar installed.

**marketingmaniac** · 10-25-2005, 05:29 PM

Although Alexa has no impact on your overall ranking within the search engines, I think it is a great tool for webmasters and IM's to gauge where their site stands. Sure you can manipulate the results, but for a normal individual there would be no motivation to do so.

**monkey** · 10-25-2005, 09:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eHits

Monkey,

Regardless of whether or not you'd like to share this insider knowledge you claim to have, you don't know how to do it. So don't tell us all here that you know of some secret method.

Bottom line, there is no software to do it, and you cannot write you own custom software to do it. (if it were possible, then the whole Alexa rating system would be compromised by virtually everyone in like one week, duh!) I'm 99.99% sure it cannot be done, other than by brute force direct methods--like hiring 100 offshore workers for 37 cents/hour to install the Alexa bar and then surf your site repeatedly all day long thru an ip number rotation proxy.

Mark

ok buddy.