Alexa site traffic tool (or Alexa rank checker) is an Amazon.com based company and thus many people have blind faith in this website rank checker tool. Besides, there are a lot of misinformation within the internet world which are also misleading the newbies in online business. But you should know the reality before investing your hard earn money.
Today I have decided to take you through a thorough explanation about the working process and acceptability of Alexa results.
This will include, how Alexa works, the influence of Alexa ranking in SEO (the most important thing for a long term online business), and other hidden facts about Alexa. This information will positively help you to decide whether Alexa can really provide you a great service for your online campaign or not.
What is Alexa?
Let me first introduce Alexa, as it is a mandatory task before reviewing a product.
In 1996 Alexa.com discovered Alexa ranking system, which was owned by Amazon.com in 1999. By accumulating and auditing several data such as website hits, frequency of visit, page view per day, it basically detects the website rank as well as popularity of a website/webpage. If people visit the same page several times from the same IP address, it’s considered as a single visit.
How does Alexa work?
To check Alexa ranking, first of all, you have to install the Alexa toolbar in your browser.
After installing the Alexa toolbar, it records IP addresses and visitors on your website and summarizes (and compares) the data to display website ranking. Lower the rank of your website, higher the popularity (As per Alexa ranking). Alexa uses simple algorithms to calculate website rankings.
Don’t mix up Alexa ranking to the Google ranking. Google has it’s own systems to rank a page or a website that is more complicated and it doesn’t care about Alexa ranking.
For your information, Alexa ranking is based on only the number of hits on your website. That is their only ranking criteria. But Google doesn’t like this simplicity. Google has tons of other criteria to rank a website, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the major factor for ranking in Google. Alexa has nothing to do with SEO.
However, Alexa ranking is not accurate always due to several reasons that include the manipulation factor. I am coming to the fact soon in the upcoming paragraphs. Under certain situations, Alexa raking system is still popular in judging website popularity though the craze is lowering gradually due to inaccuracy (I personally faced the error in Alexa traffic/ranking in my test run with respect to Google analytics and Jaaxy).
Alexa ranking manipulation – Is it possible?
Absolutely possible!
You can manipulate your website’s Alexa ranking through a thorough process, which is not critical at all. The manual manipulation is possible by creating a JavaScript function to loop through an array of page addresses from your website. You have to open each address in a separate window, that is the trick.
To follow the simplicity most of the people use Alexa boosters (either web-based or software programs). These programs use thousands of proxies to receive false or dummy hits.
Do you know what are the proxies? – They are unsecured IP addresses with an open port that is accessible to anyone.
These proxy methods are the simplest way to gain dummy traffic to increase website ranking in Alexa. However, there are few complex programs available, which can alter the keywords and user-agents, but at the end of the day all programs function the same… they boost the number of dummy hits to decrease website Alexa ranking (increase Alexa popularity).
If you manage to get thousands of fake hits daily in this way, undoubtedly the Alexa popularity of your website will increase in a steep graph.
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But, Why should you manipulate Alexa ranking?
Now the question arises, what are the points to manipulate Alexa ranking in such a unethical way?!
Although people can realize the process is not fair at all, still they are interested to do it, mainly for some business purposes. If you can show a higher Alexa ranking to your website, it looks much popular as well as increases the financial worth of the website. When people prefer to sell a cheap quality website, often they use Alexa ranking system to show the higher popularity of their website and at the same time hikes the financial value.
Some people use Alexa as a sign of status. A higher Alexa ranking is a sign of popularity and hence visitors find a reason to visit that site.
Rest of the few people use Alexa just for fun and to get excited watching their websites are ranking well!
Pros and cons to use Alexa
Like every products Alexa also has some positives and negatives. Maybe it is not an expert system like Google, but still, it is popular and many people still follow Alexa ranking.
Pros
- Higher Alexa ranking can influence the advertisers. This helps the bloggers to make more money from their websites through external advertisements.
- You can have a rough estimation of your daily traffic (Caution: It may not be accurate).
- Good Alexa ranking can increase the financial value of your website. If you are looking to sell your website, Alexa is a good option.
- Higher Alexa ranking can increase the number of guest posts to your website.
Cons
- Alexa ranking is relative; the comparison is applicable to only those site owners who installed Alexa toolbar to their browser. So you can not expect an accurate result.
- Alexa ranking can be manipulated. So, never expect accuracy from Alexa ranking system.
- Alexa manipulated the ranking system is not good for the long term business website.
Is Alexa Ranking worthy of your website?
Alexa ranking is worthy only in limited situations as described above. You are encouraged to include the Alexa ranking system for your website…
- If you need only a rough estimation for your website traffic, but for an accurate number you should try some better system like Google Analytics or any other system that is related to Google.
- If you are happy with a rough and relative ranking for the pages on your website. In case you are interested to find the perfect ranking of your web pages in Google, there is a better tool for you.
- If you are interested to attract advertisers by manipulating the ranking (with the help of fake traffic) as well as Alexa popularity.
- If you are looking to sell a cheap quality website (Increase Alexa popularity by manipulation methods).
I personally don’t recommend Alexa ranking tool, because I found inaccuracy in their system. However, artificial boosting methods are okay for a short term popularity, but for the long run, you should have quality contents on your website which can actually optimize the search engines proper way.
If you are looking to check the original Google ranking for your web pages, you should use Jaxxy.com. This is not only a webpage rank provider but also a great keyword research tool; in fact, one of the best keyword research tool I have seen so far.
Alexa Ranking Package – how worthy is it?
So let’s have a walk through the Alexa ranking package. I hope you know you can see Alexa ranking/traffic free of cost for only 7-14 days (depending upon the plan). If you decided to use this tool continuously, you have to pay $19.99-$799 per month (depending upon the plan).
- Marketing Stack: $149-299 per month
- Website Traffic Analysis: $79 per month
- Certified Alexa Rank for Your Site: $19.99-$799 per month
Now the question is, how worthy Alexa ranking package is?
Earlier I already explained the pros and cons of Alexa. In addition to the cons list, they try to sell you several services they already have. This will offer you a more clear picture and you can scan the worth by yourself now.
You are sharing your data with Alexa to get Alexa ranking and you have to pay for it. Don’t you think you should get paid for this? I’d say there is no meaning to use this tool by investing that much money, and I’m saying this after experiencing the tool. I’d say save your money and spend it on a better service.
If you want a recommendation from my side, I would suggest you use JAAXY, a dynamic tool that can provide original rank in search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing, in fact, you can check the ranks for every page within your website. This tool actually tracks original search engine ranking for a website URL. JAAXY is not only the rank checker but it is also a great keyword research tool (as I mentioned earlier). You know, keywords are the major element for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and SEO is the permanent solution to keep a website alive in the long run.
Does Alexa ranking has any relation to SEO?
This headline is mentioned because people often be misguided about this fact. Earlier I already mentioned the working process of Alexa ranking, and it is clear that there is no influence of SEO in Alexa ranking and vice versa. That means Alexa score is not an indicator to understand how well a website ranks in Search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing, nor it reflects the success of a website.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a much more complicated factor that depends on a lot of things, and this is the best way to run a profitable website for a long time.
What Alexa does, just accumulate website database on number hits per day, maybe that is real traffic or fake. And for this silly thing, they ask you to pay $149 per month (If you buy the most popular marketing stack package). Although they claim, the most marketing stack package includes site audit, keyword research, SEO checker, still, it is not worthy of its price. Instead, if you install Google Analytics and Google Search Console on your website you’ll be able to accumulate much more data with 100% accuracy, and both of them are FREE services offered by Google. These data include the number of hits, country-wise statistics, time, comparisons, most popular pages in your website, real-time analysis, keyword preferences by the visitors, and many more statistics which you never can expect from Alexa.
So, it is very clear to you that, Alexa does not offer accurate results or statistics, neither it can measure your website with respect to SEO. To make a long term profitable website, you must have to focus on SEO and it is mandatory. Only quality contents with proper keywords and systematic evaluation can optimize the search engines perfectly. There are no alternatives.
If you are looking for SEO help to make a profitable online business, you can learn all about SEO to apply them to your website by yourself, and there are services out there.
Achieving a good rank for a website in Google and other search engines is the first and foremost job to run a profitable website, and if you are really interested to rank your website well in search engines, I’d recommend you to get some quality education and discover it through the following link.
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I hope I could let you realize the overall facts about Alexa’s service, the bads, and the goods and also the outcomes. If you have any further questions on this topic, you can ask below without any hesitation, I’d be more than happy to help you out.
If you find this article helpful, please share it with others, so that people can learn before the mistake. It is highly recommended to share your personal insight below in the comment box.
if you look on Facebook’s Alexa data detail page you will see “this site’s metrics are estimated”.
That should tell you something about how accurate Alexa’s rankings are.
This is probably Amazon’s worst product, as there is no way the rankings on Alexa reflect real-life metrics.
For instance, where Alexa says (on their high ranking sites) ” this sites metrics are certified” Why do they need to say that and what is “certified” Are the sites subscribing to the paid plan to have their sites certified?
Kantipurdaily.com in February 2018 subscribed to the paid plan of Alexa and their ranking shot up immediately.
How does that work?
last time I looked even Amazon .com does not have its site verified on Alexa.
Thanks for these insights into Alexa. It has increased my knowldege in this area. Thanks so much.
I am glad that the article about Alexa helped out. We are continuously working on offering new and valuable information about the online world.
Thank you for visiting here in Wonder Treasure and get in touch.
This is the first time that I have heard of this program (Alexa site traffic program) and I am sure it will be a great help to those that may want to go this way.
It is my great pleasure that you become familiar with Alexa right from this review. I hope you’ll stay cautious about such types of programs on your online journey. Bet wishes.