What the heck is Alexa anyway?

I have been talking a bit about blog ranking numbers in the past couple of weeks. The whole science behind them and the reasons that we even have to care are fascinating. Next on the list is Alexa.

What is Alexa?

I started an experiment about a month or so ago when I installed the little Alexa button in my toolbar right over there –>. I have watched the number start pretty dang high, and drop from day to day, go up again and drop again. It’s all very confusing. Reading around the web it seems that most believe that the numbers can’t be trusted. It is stated that once the number is above 100,000, then it becomes more stable and trustworthy.

You see, the whole science of Alexa is that it based on the number of users to your blog that have the Alexa toolbar installed. I have been using Google Chrome for quite a while and I don’t have it because it is not available. Do you have it? It is available for IE and Firefox, and apparently gives the blog “points” when you visit the site.

Oddly enough, visiting Alexa.com and poking around and clicking About does not lead to a clear elevator pitch definition of what exactly Alexa is at all. Weird. However, I found a good detailed explanation here.

Why should you care?

Well… you shouldn’t, unless you are all about the numbers ($$). If you sign up on a site such as BuySellAds, your Alexa rank is listed among the stats for your site, which means that advertisers will check it out when looking for sites to place their ads on.  So, you should definitely care if you are looking to make money from advertising on your blog.

What is your blog’s Alexa ranking?

To find out your ranking visit Alexa.com and type your blogs URL into the search box. I cannot remember the exact number from when I finally started paying attention to mine, but I think it was over 3 million. It’s now at 598,059, but that number fluctuates by a few thousand from day to day.

How can you raise it?

Raising it is fairly easy and works fast. Encourage your readers to install the Alexa toolbar. If you have loyal readers that are using it, each time they visit your blog your Alexa ranking goes up a little bit more. Also, install it yourself since you probably pay a fair amount of visits to you own blog.

You should also claim your site in Alexa and fill in your profile information. This will make it easier for new readers to find your site when browsing Alexa. I have noticed that the widget in my sidebar is a bit slow to update. The numbers are usually higher than if I check on Alexa’s site.
If you are looking for yet another thing to obsess over on your blog, check out your Alexa ranking. 🙂