Alexa does not work at all and we should not even recognize it as valid anymore from what I've learned.
You can game Alexa with as few as three machines running the Alexa toolbar.
So, let's see how high we can get Calacanis.com over the next five days shall we?
Step One: Everyone install the Alexa Toolbar and load my blog 100 times over the next couple of days. Please put your name below if you are taking part in the experiment. We're gonna do this for like 10 days then stop.
Step Two: Get a webpage refresher for Internet Explorer and set it to reload the page every 10 minutes or something random.
http://www.download.com/Refresher/3000-2356_4-10497539.html?tag=lst-0-2
http://www.download.com/Auto-URL-Refresher/3000-2381_4-10399160.html?tag=lst-0-1
Step Three: Load the main page (www.calacanis.com) and the about page ( http://www.calacanis.com/about/ ) so we can track the % impact we have in the details over at Alexa.
Update: Some folks have said I'm trying to do this to get my rating up/page views up. Uhhh.... no. This is a test. I don't have any ads here and these page views mean nothing to me--they are not real! They represent nothing but a test. Plus we are going to stop this test in 10 days or so--let's say Dec. 3rd. So, this is just a temporary spike in pages that does NOTHING for me on any level. Zero! If someone wants to run the test on a brand new domain name we can do that too.
Alexa is 100% wrong and you can game it with as few as three machines--or so I've been told.
Reader Comments
(Page 3 of 4)42. I would like to know if french sites are disadvantaged by Alexa algorythm ?
Posted at 6:58AM on Dec 4th 2006 by Fabien Bardoux
44. I love it! I checkout your stats on Alexa. You've jumped up 1,992 spots in the 3 month average (at the time of this comment). You can clearly see your jump right after your original post. It would be interesting to see the impact on a new website.
My boss thinks the Alexa rating is the most important indicator of online marketing success. Never mind the fact that I've tripled revenue since taking over the online marketing. I still haven't broken the company website into the top 10,000, so he keeps giving me s*. I think I'll have the guys at the office workup a number six on our website to get a similar effect to what you've seen :-D
45. We had a new member join our Network very recently and I also saw an Adbrite ad showing his site, so I just had to check out the Alexa Ranking as I know how screwed it used to be.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.3o4.com%2F
This seems to confirm my own theory that it isn't the number of unique visitors which makes the difference, it is the number of pages which are viewed which seems to add importance to the Alexa Ranking. In setting up the site the user has viewed many, many pages on each visit. Today the ranking is actually dropping:
Today 1 wk. Avg. 3 mos. Avg. 3 mos. Change
55,574 46,331 239,987 --
I have the impression a site can still be easily manipulated into the top 100,00........................
Set up your site, spend $100 with Google/Adbrite for a day and watch the ranking climb. The trouble is, I still don't know why you would do this??????
Posted at 4:48AM on Dec 18th 2006 by Alan Skelton
46. hello,
I couldn't get the Alexa toolbar to install correctly so I've added a Firefox extension, Search Status, found at www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/. I will hit your two sites and hopefully this will have an effect.
Enjoy,
Ron
sprezzaturaron.livejournal.com
sprezzaturarrd.blogspot.com
Posted at 8:43PM on Feb 13th 2007 by Ron
48. Anybody know any other way of increasing Alexa ranking? I've been trying, and so far there's no change. How long does it usually take?
Posted at 8:05PM on Aug 2nd 2007 by Suzie
49. I have experience with this, me and 2 friends started a website and in 3 months of only us building the site and testing we got it to 90k.
We recently launched the site and had 60k page loads in the first weekly rank went to 240k (our overall only dropped to 93k) So I think you can fudge it but once you start getting traffic it is harder to do it.
Posted at 3:34PM on Aug 8th 2007 by Josh
50. Wow it's that simple to say that Alexa is 100% wrong and we can actually game with it? Hmmm this is very interesting thanks for sharing that jason.
Posted at 9:39PM on Aug 9th 2007 by lhaizza
52. Thanks.. that is true !
but when we selling the site / get advertising on our sites.. we need to prove the alexa , google ranks !
Posted at 6:11PM on Sep 26th 2007 by Venkadesan Tharshan
53. So where is the conclusion to this article? There's plenty of comment, but I haven't found much conclusion linked from here or from the search.
I really wish Google would offer the traffic stats of those of us using thier analytics code to be publicly available.
http://benchmarkreviews.com
54. I have a traffic exchange site, and it was actually doing BETTER in the ratings before I began promoting it. I wonder why it dropped 1,000,00 places when I have MORE members. They are't running the alexa toolbar, maybe that is part of it. How annoying. From where I sit, I think the Alexa ratings are a bunch of blarney.
It relies on an installed piece of software that is passively installed by the user.
Is there any ranking system that actually looks at the traffic?
55. I think an issue is being missed in the alexa-is-useless debate.
What does google do with alexa's data?
I recently did an experiment similar to the one described above. I clicked through my new site, which has been averaging about 45 uniques, and left the page sit for hours
to game alexa. In 10 days the rank jumped from 5.4M to
1.7M alexa rank. whee.
As soon as the new alexa number began to appear, google demoted my best pages, several of which were on page one or two of google SERPs, to "not in top 100."
I believe google penalizes rapid changes in alexa, most of which are achieved by scripts, even if they are not a positive part of the ranking algorythm.
Anybody else got thoughts on google's use of alexa?
Posted at 7:57PM on Dec 7th 2007 by Ed Sherbenou
57. I have plenty of traffic however, my Alexa ranking just doesn't seem to improve. I just don't get it. I have thousands of visitors everyday however, my Alexa rank does not move. How reliable is Alexa? Any help would be appreciated.
Posted at 5:53PM on Dec 28th 2007 by John
58. I love backgammon :)
Posted at 8:34AM on Jan 16th 2008 by Backgammon
59. I had to give it a try....add me also..
Posted at 8:03AM on Mar 20th 2008 by Nokia Secret Codes
60. I'm sorry, after doing a search of this blog I have been unable to find a follow up post to the results of this experiment. Was one ever made? I have had the same impressions regarding the alexa rankings but it would be interesting to see the data in a study of this sort. Thanks Jason.
Posted at 6:54PM on Mar 21st 2008 by San Diego Computer Repair
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41. I asked a week ago if you'd be so outspoken if your experiment failed. Looks like others are speaking up for you:
Wait ? Does This Mean Alexa?s NOT Wrong? (Or Jason Calacanis Has No Friends?)
http://www.deepjiveinterests.com/2006/11/30/wait-does-this-mean-alexas-not-wrong-or-jason-calacanis-has-no-friends/
Posted at 5:49PM on Dec 1st 2006 by Lorne