Your Alexa Rating Is It Really That Important?

Your Alexa Rating Is It Really That Important?

by: Richard Grady

A discussion in my forum has prompted this newsletter as I think it is important for any online entrepreneur to understand how Alexa ratings work in order that they can understand why they may not be that important to the success of their online business. Too many people make the mistake of concentrating entirely on improving their Alexa ratings but at the end of the day, these rankings are just numbers they won’t put money in the bank.

Alexa is a company owned by the Amazon group and it aims to rank every single website on the Internet in terms of how much traffic it is receiving.

Quite simply, the lower your Alexa ranking, the more traffic your website gets. The ideal scenario would be to have an Alexa ranking of ก1ก. This would mean, in theory, that your website receives more traffic than any other website in the world. Currently this position is held by Yahoo.com and as you would expect, other top sites include Microsoft, Google and eBay.

It is generally considered that a website with an Alexa rating of 100,000 or less is receiving a reasonable level of traffic but Alexa can be wildly misleading and very easily manipulated.

To understand why the rankings are misleading, you need to understand how Alexa gathers the data that it uses to create the rankings in the first place. This is really very simple Alexa has a free toolbar that you can download and install within your Internet browser and this reports back to Alexa with the details of every single website that you visit.

Alexa can then use this information to see how many users are visiting a particular website. Then, because not every Internet user has the Alexa toolbar installed, Alexa will multiply the number of visitors by a specific margin to estimate the total number of visitors that a site may typically receive. The important word in the last sentence is กestimateก.

Letกs assume that the above multiplication margin is ten that means that for each Alexa toolbar user that visits a specific web page, Alexa assumes that another nine nontoolbar users will also visit the same page. This means that if 100 toolbar users visit a specific web page on a given day, Alexa will take this as meaning that a total of 1000 people visited the same page in that 24 hour period.

This is where the figures can get distorted. If you have a website that attracts a higher than average number of Alexa toolbar users, then you are going to gain a lower Alexa rating because Alexa doesn’t make any allowance for the fact that their toolbar users visit certain types of site more often. A typical example of this is Internet marketing sites. Most Internet entrepreneurs will have the Alexa toolbar installed because they like to see the Alexa rankings for sites as they visit them (the toolbar shows you this information as soon as you visit a site). But this means that if your website attracts a lot of Internet marketingtype visitors, then your Alexa rating will be inflated above what it should be.

Here is a truelife example:

There was a popular Internet marketing site for sale last year and it had an Alexa rating of about 19,000. I figured it must be getting heavy traffic but when I discussed the matter with the owner/seller, I found that it was only receiving 6000 unique visitors a month! The reason that the Alexa rating was so low was because the majority of these visitors had the Alexa toolbar installed and therefore the calculations were being thrown out massively.

It is also possible to purchase software that will generate false hits to your site using the Alexa technology so that Alexa is fooled into believing that more people are visiting your site. This pushes your Alexa ranking down.

At the end of the day though, what is the point of having a low Alexa rating if you are not making any sales? Sure it is nice to be able to say that your site is in the top 20,000 websites in the world but if the site isn’t earning you an income, this ranking means very little (assuming that it was your intention for the site to earn you an income of course). Personally, I would much rather have a high Alexa ranking but a good income than a low ranking and minimal income.

Of course, there are benefits to the Alexa service and it can be worthwhile installing their toolbar. The toolbar will give you an indication of how busy a particular site is and in turn, how popular it is. This can be helpful when making a decision as to whether to make an online purchase for example. It is also handy for checking out your competitors 🙂

Just don’t get too hung up on Alexa as a measure of how well your business is doing. The real statistics that you should be watching are actual traffic numbers, conversion rates (ie. how many visitors actually buy something) and overall sales. These are the figures that will help you put cash in the bank and improve and grow your business.

If you are interested in finding out more about Alexa and if you wish to install their toolbar, you can do so at http://www.alexa.com

Copyright 2004 Richard Grady

About The Author

Richard Grady has been helping people earn online since 1998. Find out more about Richard at: http://www.thetraderonline.com. Free wholesale search engines: UK http://www.wholesale118.co.uk and US http://www.thewholesaletrader.com.

This article was posted on September 16, 2004

by Richard Grady

Alexa: Why You Should Be Using The Toolbar

Alexa: Why You Should Be Using The Toolbar

by: Mark Thompson

Why on earth would anyone want to install a piece of spyware onto their Web browser? No sensible right minded person would …unless you are a webmaster and you want to improve your SERPS ranking that is.

The Alexa toolbar is not ขtechnicallyข spyware as it doesn’t retrieve any private or personal information. It does however log all the sites you visit and as webmasters we can use this to our advantage. It uses this information to compile traffic ranking statistics and a relational list. The relational list is very useful as it shows what other sites people who have looked the current website have also visited. Alexa is owned by Amazon and it is possible to make your own Alexa toolbar with your Amazon affiliate code included. You can then place this on your site and get credited when anyone buys through Amazon using the Amazon button on the toolbar you’ve distributed, it is also possible to include a link to your site in the toolbar.

Alexa ranks sites from 1 to 5,000,000 and sometimes higher. Ranking 1 has the most traffic and so on, anything below 250,000 and you should be getting some decent traffic levels. This information can be used to determine how well your advertising campaigns are going and how traffic levels are growing over a period of time. This information can also be used to determine how you rivals are doing and keep you one step ahead of them. The Alexa information is also picked up by other search engines so you benefit from an increase in you SERPS as your site progresses up the rankings .

One drawback of the Alexa toolbar is that it only works on Internet Explorer and not the tool of choice for most webmasters Firefox. However I personally feel this is a small price to pay for the benefits I get when using the tool bar for research and to check my sites daily. Checking the stats of your own site has a positive impact on your Alexa ranking as the toolbar is not generally used by the general public so every extra hit from a browser with the tool bar installed is valuable. I have 1 site that is almost exclusively used by webmasters , As webmasters are the people who use Alexa more than any other group 500 page views a day are enough to get this site into the top 500,000 Another site that has 3 times the traffic but the visitors are mostly the general public so this site is languishing in the 2,000,000 ‘s.

Why not try an experiment for a month, Download the toolbar and monitor one of your sites, once you see the data you get and the way it can be used you won’t know how you survived without it.

About The Author

Mark Thompson has spent a number of years traveling the World and Racing Motorbikes, when funds got low he worked as an IT consultant In London. He now lives in Spain and runs a number of Websites Including http://www.WorldoftheWeird.com and http://www.LinksFactory.com.

This article was posted on September 13

by Mark Thompson

Six Reasons Why Your Alexa Rating Is Still Importa

Six Reasons Why Your Alexa Rating Is Still Important

by: Tinu AbayomiPaul

1. Additional Exposure For Your Site.

At the end of 2003, Alexa.comกs results were being closely linked into the listings of itsก parent company, Amazon.com. This currently means that when someone reviews your site, it is linked to their amazon profile, which can be accessed when people browsing for books look to see what reviewers like them suggest. In the future, it could mean that amazon.com will integrate your web site in other ways, such as showing a list of websites related to popular topics such as marketing.

2. Alexaกs relationship with Google.com

See if you can name one major partnership that Google.com or Amazon.com has had where the other party came out worse off in the end.

Yahoo? I don’t think so. Though their relationship has soured for reasons that aren’t common knowledge, and Google.com does not supply Yahoo with search results any longer, it certainly didn’t make Yahoo.com less popular a destination online. If anything, more webmaster like you and me, who could not afford the $200 fee for a commercial review to be listed, rush to Yahoo to see if our Google listings really were coming up number one there, too. Can’t think of any other one, can you?

Letกs discuss how this is relevant to you.

This little known advantage to having a good Alexa rating is fairly new. I was doing some research on Google, at the end of last year, to see what was the fastest, cheapest way to get my brand new site good ranking and fast inclusion in Googleกs database. Using Alexa.com, I was able to discover one of the biggest secrets online that showed me how to get a visit from the Googlebot spider and included in their index in under a week. The Googlebot spider now visits the home page of my site every day, re=spidering my site when I make significant changes.

While I was at Alexa, I noticed that very quietly, without a lot of hoopla or publicity, Alexa Internet began to include a Google search right in their toolbar at the end of last year. Upon further investigation, I realized that Alexa and Google were getting quite chummy. This relationship directly led to the idea I had which uncovered a way to get Alexa and Google to help me get free, unlimited traffic for any keyword related to my siteกs topic.

The idea was so simple, so cheap, and so profitable that I started to write a book about it, which I finished this past January. Everything was great, I was getting great traffic. Then I woke up one morning and checked my email, and most of my online colleagues were ticked off about something called the Florida update, which caused many small commercial websites to have their listings drop in ranking or disappear altogether.

Of course, I went to check on my site.

Not only did my ranking not drop, I had additional listings and improved exposure. One of the several factors that appeared to be the reason for my improved rankings, not just in spite of, but because of the Florida update, was my Alexa ranking. Further testing on other commercial sites of fellow small business owners confirmed this.

This experience taught me to pay a lot more attention to my Alexa rating, as well as to have a new appreciation for the ratings of all my sites.

Your Alexa rating is still relevant to you because it appears to be a factor in your page rank at Google. Generally, anything that is important to Google is important to me, because I wanted to learn how to make the site an excellent source of traffic for me. And it worked.

Working to have a rise in my Alexa rating helped me in my quest for free quality traffic as well every increase in my Alexa rating has coincided with a rise in both the number of keywords I rank for and the likelihood that my site will appear on the first page of search results, first at Google, then with other search engines.

Youกd never know that I haven’t ever submitted them my link.

3.Your competitorกs awareness is increasing.

Those of us who have been online since the early 90กs, before the graphical interface we now call the World Wide Web, are well aware of the Alexa toolbar, and there are many schools of thought as to its effectiveness as an indicator of your siteกs traffic.

Whether you believe itกs 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. Your competition knows this if they have any marketing savvy at all.

While not as compelling as the fact that Google is now tied to Alexa, itกs no small issue that other webmasters are beginning to show interest in Alexa.com again. Now that Alexa is being positioned to have a closer integration with Amazon, has improved their toolbar to include a free popup blocker and Google search results, as well as given webmasters incentive to install the Alexa toolbar, many site owners either offer the toolbar or display their Alexa ranking proudly on their sites.

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

4. Client awareness is rising

Even if you’re not a commercial website, and don’t really 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. Alexa allows you to customize a version of their toolbar and allow you to offer it as a free download from your site. Not only can you profit from their amazon.com purchases, but when regular visitors return to your site with the toolbar installed, it can help maintain your ranking.

The way things are going, the situation of having clients checking your Alexa reviews and ratings before they buy from you to one day be routine. Do you want to be ahead of that possible trend, or wait, and push it when everyone else finally catches on?

5. Alexaกs Perceived Importance

The whole reason for this article is that in answer to the last article I wrote about Alexa, I got a lot of feedback questioning whether Alexa Internet and its toolbar were still important to webmasters. So far, at minimum, for the last two reasons I stated, the Perception of Alexa being an important webmaster tool is increasing.

So even if you don’t think it is important, if your visitors feel it is, then it may be time for you to at least pay attention to the recent changes.

6. Alexaกs Actual Importance

As Alexaกs perceived importance is growing, itกs actual importance seems to be moving at the same rate. Hereกs why.

It would be one thing if all the hoopla about Alexa took place and everyone installed or reinstalled the toolbar, and everyone found out that both the site and the toolbar were useless. Remember when autosurf exchanges first became popular? Everyone jumped on the bandwagon for about a month, then several articles came out about six weeks later, stating that they were ineffectual because real humans weren’t viewing the sites anymore.

Look around the Net for about an hour and see if you can find any new negative press about Alexa from webmasters since November. All Iกve seen are the same questions there were before is my Alexa rating important, and why? Are Alexaกs traffic stats accurate?

And I still have the same answers. Your Alexa rating is important to you if you have a commercial website because it is important to Google and to your competition. And whether your site is commercial or not, it is becoming important to your visitors, which is why your site exists to cater to them, you should make your siteกs relationship with Alexa.com a priority.

As to Alexaกs statistical accuracy, I can’t say for sure. Itกs a much debated topic. But itกs pretty 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 is not something that can really be cheated or faked. So perhaps it is not perfectly exact as a comparison of your site to another unrelated site.

But it is the closest thing to a universal, impartial 3rd party measure of traffic we have. And more importantly, it can give your clients yet another reason to trust you enough to buy from your site. Testimonials in the form of reviews on their site, as well as fast access to your contact information from outside your site can mean the difference between a browser and a buyer.

If you haven’t had the chance to download the Alexa toolbar, you can get it from http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/alexatoolbar or you can get the Alexa Snapshot from www.alexa.com if you have Netscape or if you’re not on a PC. Itกs a free resource, and all you have to lose or gain is more free traffic.

About The Author

Tinu is a free traffic FANATIC. She has been offered treatment for this condition but says it just saves her too much money! For more free traffic secrets, subscribe to the Free Traffic Secrets Ezine by sending any blank email to [email protected] bonuses for subscribers include free access to a resource that gets you free advertising for life in 9 minutes a day. Or, get Tinuกs free Google optimization guide at http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com

This article was posted on February 26, 2004

by Tinu AbayomiPaul

Itกs The Same Deal For Both Search Engines And Rea

Itกs The Same Deal For Both Search Engines And Real Estate

by: Kirk Bannerman

Itกs all about location, location, location!

In the past…back in the days when Google was IT when it came to natural search results…everyone was very focused (or shall we say obsessed?) on Google page rank.

Now that Google is a public company and the search business has become competitive (most notably due to the serious search capabilities now being offered by Yahoo and Microsoft, via MSN), Google has become much more กprivateก or secretive about things like page rank, backlinks, etc.

As a matter of fact, many are of the opinion that Google is now intentionally displaying outdated page rank and backlink information on the Google Toolbar in an effort to mask the true workings of Google and to frustrate the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) community, which had become fairly skillful at กplaying the Google gameก. If this is the case, then Google page rank fixation is now pure folly.

Another factor that is closely watched by webmasters is the Alexa traffic rank. This traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users.

However, the Alexa user base is only a sample of the Internet population, and sites with relatively low traffic will not be accurately ranked by Alexa due to the statistical limitations of the sample.

Alexaกs data come from a large sample of several million Alexa Toolbar users; however, this is not large enough to accurately determine the rankings of sites with fewer than roughly 1,000 total monthly visitors.

Generally speaking, traffic rankings of over 100,000 should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data that Alexa has available is not statistically significant.

Who said the emperor is wearing no clothes?

With the questionable current accuracy of two of the hallowed benchmarks of search popularity, where does that leave us? It leaves us exactly where we should have been in the first place, not obsessing over Google Page Rank or Alexa Traffic Rank, but instead focusing on the most important thing of all…and that is, what is your position in the listings when a person searches for your key words.

For both search engines and real estate, itกs all about location, location, location!

About The Author

Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and coaches others seeking to start their own home based business. Visit his website at http://www.businessathome.us for more details.

This article was posted on October 12, 2004

by Kirk Bannerman

Internet Nielsen Reports

Internet Nielsen Reports

by: Bryan Brandenburg

What if you were able to have access to your competitorกs web statistics? What if you knew how much traffic they had, the average number of page views, what other sites their visitors went to? What if you could tell how successful a campaign was or if their recent press release had any impact? Would that be a strategic advantage?

The Nielsen Ratings of the Internet

There is an incredible marketing research tool called the Alexa Toolbar that you can find at www.Alexa.com. Alexa is owned by Amazon and is essentially the Nielsen Ratings for the Internet.

Relative Traffic Rankings

When you install the Alexa Toolbar you will be able to see a ranking of every important website on the Internet. Itกs a relative ranking and biased towards the US but itกs incredibly useful information. A traffic ranking of 10,000 means that there are 9,999 websites more popular and every other website on the Internet is less popular. So if your competitor is claiming they are the most popular website of their kind on the Internet youกll be able to judge for yourself. No Data means that although the website may have some visitors, none of them use the toolbar or itกs not significant enough to measure.

Historical Traffic Trends Shown Graphically

As a consumer youกll be able to determine how popular a website is and if ‘they’re realก. Alexa shows historical trends graphically for the top 100,000 websites on the Internet so you can see if a website is getting more or less popular. You can even do a graphical comparison between two websites, like you and your competitor, to see how you’re doing. The site also details reach per million surfers and average number of page views per visitor in both table form and graphically (An example can be seen at http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=vmmg.net).

Other Statistics

Alexa also has a variety of other useful statistics about websites. It lists the number of important links to the website which is a factor when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. This would not include most กlink farmsก and relatively less important website links. It also shows where the visitors are spending their time on a website and what other websites the visitors are surfing.

Top Website Listings

There is also top website listings and top category listings for a number of vertical markets. Want to find out the top sports sites, business sites or even photography, itกs all here. This is really useful when you’re looking at the dominant players in your market and trying to emulate the best in your category.

Install the Toolbar Now

Although anyone can get the great information on Alexa just by going to the website, youกll want to install the toolbar for realtime analysis of every website you visit. Not only will you be able to determine the relative ranking of every website you visit, but youกll instantly see related websites that may aid in finding whatever you’re looking for. You can download the toolbar now at www.alexa.com.

About The Author

Bryan Brandenburg has published 5 books as well as a number of articles both in print and on the internet. He has published almost 30 software programs both for consumers and business. More information can be found at www.vmmg.net.

This article was posted on October 26, 2004

by Bryan Brandenburg

Get to Know Your Competitors Using Alexa

Get to Know Your Competitors Using Alexa

by: Megan Corwin

All great marketers know that in order to be the top in your field you need to know your competitors. But researching each one can be time consuming and a treasure hunt at best. Using Alexa (www.alexa.com) can be an invaluable tool for you to find out what your competitors are up to on the web.

What is Alexa?

Alexa is an Amazon.com company that maintains information about website traffic.

You can find out the most popular sites in a variety of categories such as business, sports, recreation, and shopping.

How do I use Alexa?

To access this tool, simply go to http://www.alexa.com. From there you can browse the topic of your business or type in a specific website in the กSearch the Webก box.

Letกs use the gift basket business as an example. First, go to Alexaกs home page and type in กgift basketsก as a search. When your search results appear, look at the end of the description for the link titled กSite Info.ก This is where you will find your research gold.

What can I learn about the top ranked site?

When you click on the กSite Infoก link, lots of valuable information is displayed. The first thing to note is the traffic ranking of the website. The top gift basket site is ranked 119,370. Not bad considering there are millions of pages online at any given time.

Other useful information listed on this site info page is other websites that visitors also went to and the number of sites that link to this website. Other sites that link to the site can be very valuable what search engines is the site listed in? Where are they advertising?

Next, click on the กSee Traffic Detailsก link near the top of the page. Look at the traffic for the site and note that in the last week the number of visitors has increased by almost 100,000. Wow! What could be the reason? The holidays? A contest? Their keywords and titles? An advertising campaign? Take a look at the site and see if there is a spectacular giveaway or something very attractive going on.

Summary

Alexa is a very powerful tool for researching your competitors. Also, be sure to look at your siteกs listing to find out how well it is doing compared to others in your industry. As you analyze your competitors, look for their strengths so that you can emulate them and also their weaknesses so that you can set your business apart.

About The Author

Megan Corwin is a personal coach who enjoys helping work at home professionals grow their businesses while maintaining an organized household. Download Megan’s free ebook กHow to Market Your Small Business Online for FREEก: http://marketonlinefree.wahwoman.com

This article was posted on December 01, 2003

by Megan Corwin

Google Is Taking Descriptions From Alexa!

Google Is Taking Descriptions From Alexa!

by: Martin Lemieux

In a recent study looking at the กdescriptionsก of website search engine listings, we have noticed that your main SERP listing is being manipulated by Alexa.com.

If you take your top key word search engine placement within Google and look at your websiteกs description, you will notice something similar with other websites, the descriptions match those taken from Alexa.com!!!

Take a peek for yourself.

1 Search for your top key word in Google (usually the first key phrase within your title tag).

2 Now copy & paste this description in a note pad or word doc.

3 Once you have this, go to: www.alexa.com

4 Type in your กurlก in the address bar

5 Look at the description from Google and the description from Alexa, they should be an exact match.

NOTE: If you do not have a description in Alexa, Google will come up with its own version but in reality, wouldn’t you want to be in control of your websiteกs description within the SERPกs?

Not having a description in Alexa Could it directly affect your Google search engine results?

ABSOLUTELY ! ! !

I would suggest looking at your description in Alexa to make sure that it directly targets your top key phrase that you want performing well within Google.

Your Alexa description could very well determine better SERPS within Google! Google feeds results into Alexa which in turn updates information on website ranking. They are partnered up, why wouldn’t they use each others results?!

Alexaกs Description is the ‘text bookก definition:

I don’t blame Google for wanting to use these descriptions. Most descriptions in Alexa are the ‘text book versionก of your companyกs description and are usually well written, and well thought out. This would give Google an advantage so that they can spend less time on delivering quality descriptions and more time delivering better results within their searches.

I really like this idea because if this were true across the board, Google would be giving the individual website owner more freedom to write a proper description for their SERPS without using it to spam or create false information. Again, it would have to be approved by Alexaกs team anyways, they probably wouldn’t allow key word stuffing for their site as it is.

About The Author

Martin Lemieux is the owner of the Smartads Advertising Network who helps to increase your business online and offline.

Smartads Internet Marketing: http://www.smartads.info

Smartads Canada: http://www.smartads.ca

Web Designers Directory: http://www.3dimentionaldesign.com

Copyright © 2005 Smartads Advertising Network Reprints accepted as long as the resource box & entire article remains the same.

This article was posted on August 09

by Martin Lemieux

A Way for Search Engines to Improve

A Way for Search Engines to Improve

by: Richard Zwicky

Wouldn’t it be nice if the search engines could comprehend our impressions of search results and adjust their databases accordingly? Properly optimized web pages would show up well in contextual searches and be rewarded with favorable reviews and listings. Pages which were spam or which had content that did not properly match the query would get negative responses and be pushed down in the search results.

Well, this reality is much closer than you might think.

To date, most webmasters and search engine marketers have ignored or overlooked the importance of traffic as part of a search engine algorithm, and thus, not taken it into consideration as part of their search engine optimization strategy. However, that might soon change as search engines explore new methods to improve their search result offerings. Teoma and Alexa already employ traffic as a factor in the presentation of their search results. Teoma incorporated the technology used by Direct Hit, the first engine to use click through tracking and stickiness measurement as part of their ranking algorithm. More about Alexa below.

How can Traffic be a Factor?

Click popularity sorting algorithms track how many users click on a link and stickiness measurement calculates how long they stay at a website. Properly used and combined, this data can make it possible for users, via passive feedback, to help search engines organize and present relevant search results.

Click popularity is calculated by measuring the number of clicks each web site receives from a search engineกs results page. The theory is that the more often the search result is clicked, the more popular the web site must be. For many engines the click through calculation ends there. But for the search engines that have enabled toolbars, the possibilities are enormous.

Stickiness measurement is a really great idea in theory, the premise being that a user will click the first result, and either spend time reading a relevant web page, or will click on the back button, and look at the next result. The longer a user spends on each page, the more relevant it must be. This measurement does go a long way to fixing the problem with กspoofingก click popularity results. A great example of a search engine that uses this type of data in their algorithms is Alexa.

Alexaกs algorithm is different from the other search engines. Their click popularity algorithm collects traffic pattern data from their own site, partner sites, and also from their own toolbar. Alexa combines three distinct concepts: link popularity, click popularity and click depth. Its directory ranks related links based on popularity, so if your web site is popular, your site will be well placed in Alexa.

The Alexa toolbar doesn’t just allow searches, it also reports on peopleกs Internet navigation patterns. It records where people who use the Alexa toolbar go. For example, their technology is able to build a profile of which web sites are popular in the context of which search topic, and display the results sorted according to overall popularity on the Internet.

For example a user clicks a link to a กfinancial plannerก, but the web site content is an กonline casinoก. They curse for a moment, sigh, and click back to get back to the search results, and look at the next result; the web site gets a low score. The next result is on topic, and they read 4 or 5 pages of content. This pattern is clearly identifiable and used by Alexa to help them sort results by popularity. The theory is that the more page views a web page has, the more useful a resource it must be. For example, follow this link today

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=http://www.metamend.com/

look at the traffic details chart, and then click the กGo to site nowก button. Repeat the procedure again tomorrow and you should see a spike in user traffic. This shows how Alexa ranks a web site for a single day.

What Can I Do To Score Higher With Click Popularity Algorithms?

Since the scores that generate search engine rankings are based on numerous factors, thereกs no magic formula to improve your siteกs placement. Itกs a combination of things. Optimizing your content, structure and meta tags, and increasing keyword density won’t directly change how your site performs in clicktracking systems, but optimizing them will help your web siteกs stickiness measurement by ensuring that the content is relevant to the search query. This relevance will help it move up the rankings and thus improve its click popularity score.

Search Engines Can Use the Click Through Strategy to Improve Results

Search engines need to keep an eye to new technologies and innovative techniques to improve the quality of their search results. Their business model is based on providing highly relevant results to a query quickly and efficiently. If they deliver inaccurate results too often, searchers will go elsewhere to find a more reliable information resource. The proper and carefully balanced application of usage data, such as that collected by Alexa, combined with a comprehensive ranking algorithm could be employed to improve the quality of search results for web searchers.

Such a ranking formula would certainly cause some waves within the search engine community and with good reason. It would turn existing search engine results on their head by demonstrating that search results need not be passive. Public feedback to previous search results could be factored into improving future search results.

Is any search engine employing such a ranking formula? The answer is yes. Exactseek recently announced it had implemented such a system, making it the first search engine to integrate direct customer feedback into its results. Exactseek still places an emphasis on content and quality of optimization, so a well optimized web site, which meets their guidelines will perform well. What this customer feedback system will do is validate the entire process, automatically letting the search engine know how well received a search result is. Popular results will get extended views, whereas unpopular results will be pushed down in ranking.

Exactseek has recently entered into a variety of technology alliances, including the creation of an Exactseek Meta Tag awarded solely to web sites that meet their quality of optimization standards. Cumulatively, their alliances combine to dramatically improve their search results.

ExactSeekกs innovative approach to ranking search results could be the beginning of a trend among search engines to incorporate traffic data into their ranking algorithms. The searching public will likely have the last word, but webmasters and search engine marketers should take notice that the winds of change are once again blowing on the search engine playing field.

Did you find the information in this article useful? Feel free to pass it along to a friend or drop us a line at [email protected].

About The Author

Richard Zwicky is a founder and the CEO of Metamend Software, a Victoria, B.C. based firm whose cutting edge Search Engine Optimization software has been recognized around the world as a leader in its field. Employing a staff of 10, the firmกs business comes from around the world, with clients from every continent. Most recently the company was recognized for their geolocational, or GIS technology, which correlates online businesses with their physical locations, as well as their cutting edge advances in contextual search algorithms.

[email protected]

This article was posted on November 04, 2003

by Richard Zwicky