Are Alexa rankings relevant?

Advertisers, search engines and other interested parties are always looking for ways to rank sites against each other. Everyone knows about Google's PageRank, for example. But what about Alexa rankings?

For those who don't know, Alexa is an Amazon subsidiary that provides tools for navigating, classifying and searching the Web. Some of these features are done in partnership with other companies — basic search technology is provided by Google, for example. Alexa's main tool is the Alexa Toolbar (that version is for Internet Explorer, Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape users can install the A9 Toolbar instead). Besides providing easy access to Alexa information, the Toolbar actually collects statistics on what sites users are visiting and sends it back to Alexa for compilation. This sampling allows Alexa to assign popularity rankings for a given site. For example, you can see that the Alexa ranking for MakeEasyMoneyWithGoogle.com shows this site gaining readership over the past few months, finally breaking into the “top 100,000″ sites.

The problem with Alexa's rankings is that its accuracy depends on the number of browsers running the Toolbar. I think these days many more people run the Google Toolbar or simply use similar functionality already built into modern browsers like Firefox. And the Alexa Toolbar was initially only available on Internet Explorer anyhow, so it was ignored by other browser users.

Of course, blogs and other syndicated content read through news aggregators don't get counted in those statistics. (Mind you, blog stats are another problem entirely.)

So take the Alexa rankings with a grain of salt. Use them more for relative comparisons. If you're concerned about your own site's ranking, then load up the Toolbar and visit your own site once or twice a week, just to get some activity going. But spend your time worrying about other things like writing good content and following good search engine optimization techniques — they'll benefit you much more in the long run.

Eric Giguere is the author of the introductory AdSense book Make Easy Money with Google. Be sure to download and read the free sample chapter.

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