Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is best known for operating a website that provides information on web traffic to websites on the world wide web.Alexa’s HistoryAlexa Internet was founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat. Alexa back then offered context for each site visited: to whom it was registered, how many pages it had, how many other sites pointed to it, and how frequently it was updated.

In 1999, Alexa was acquired by Amazon.com for about $250 million in Amazon stock.

Alexa ranks sites based on visits from users of its Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer and from integrated sidebars in Mozilla and Netscape. In addition to their own statusbar extension, Sparky (released July 2007), there are several third-party extensions for Mozilla Firefox:

* SearchStatus shows Google PageRank and Alexa TrafficRank
* About This Site Firefox plug-in that shows metadata from Alexa TrafficRank.

There is some controversy over how Alexa’s user represent base typical Internet behavior of people using the world wide web. If Alexa’s user base is a fair statistical sample of the Internet user population (e.g., a random sample of sufficient size), Alexa’s ranking should be quite accurate but in reality, not much is known about the sample and possible sampling biases.

Another concern is whether Alexa ratings can be easily gamed or manipulated. Some webmasters claim that they can significantly improve the Alexa ranking of less popular sites by making them the default page of your browser and by exchanging web traffic with other webmasters, and by requiring their users to install the Alexa toolbar.

Wiki

Its inaccurate and can be easily gamed, why do I still need to use it or install the toolbar?

Here are some reasons why your alexa rating is still important

1. Your competitor’s awareness is increasing.

There are many schools of thought as to its effectiveness as an indicator of your site’s traffic. Well, it really doesn’t matter whether you believe it’s effective or useful, the fact remains that you can use the Alexa toolbar and the resources at Alexa.com to give your site a competitive advantage.

So, no matter what your personal feelings are about the Alexa toolbar, it may still be a good idea to gain the advantages it offers, before your rivals do.

2. Client awareness of Alexa is rising and its perceived importance

Even if you really don’t compete with other sites for anything other than traffic, you still have to deal with the fact that your visitors are becoming more aware of the Alexa toolbar. Again, so no matter what your stand about it is, if your visitors feel it is, then it may be time for you to at least pay attention to the recent changes. Lets put it this way, if a visitor from a search engine hits your site and has the toolbar installed. That visitor would see your blog’s ranking among millions of other sites out there. If its nowhere near the top 100,000,000 then that visitor would think that nobody is reading your site and why would that visitor bother.

As to Alexa’s statistical accuracy, I can’t say for sure. It’s a much debated topic but many now have proof of its inaccuracy. There is still the fact and this is much indisputable that getting into the top 100,000 sites is a significant achievement, though perhaps not as difficult as some think. And having a top 50,000 site, like JackBook dot com is not something that can really be cheated or faked.

The Most Weighing Reason

Here is the biggest and most obvious for that matter. Alexa really is the closest thing to a universal, impartial 3rd party measure of traffic we have. 3rd party means that it is not supplied by me or your readers. More importantly, it can give your clients yet another reason to trust you enough to to read from your site. It’s the fastest way to access your traffic information that is generally open to the public.

It is becoming important to your visitors, which is why your site exists- to cater to them, you should make your site’s relationship with Alexa.com a priority.

If you haven’t had the chance to get the Alexa toolbar from their site. It’s a free resource, you would lose nothing with this but it can potentially gain you more traffic. If you’d like to have it drop by alexa.com now.

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About the post author:

Rome Uy is grooming to be dubbed as Jack's Loyal Sidekick. haha He is a Filipino Graduating Nursing Student and is an active contributor on this site.