►Alexa ranking system efficency/Alexa Toolbar's site ranking efficiency

Alexa ranking system efficiency

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The Alexa Ranking system's efficiency

Since it only measures how many visitors have the toolbar installed, the system is highly unequal. The ranking values for certain sites might not reflect the reality, while other websites that are highly popular and are visited by many people would have poor Alexa Ranks.

The main reason why this happens is that different categories of people visit websites (we can distinguish categories of visitors by country, age, occupation, internet browsing habits, etc.) and, different people have different preferences when it comes to web-based services. For instance: studies show that old-aged web surfers find toolbars annoying and are they're unlikely to use such software, while the use of such services is highly common among webmasters.

Also, people from the USA are more likely to download the Alexa Toolbar and integrate it into their browser, while internet users that don't have their language supported will simply ignore it.

As Alexa Toolbar-equipped browsers access websites, the rankings of those sites improve. This happens every time, even if the same person using the same computer visits the respective website. Websites that cat large numbers of hits from webmasters, visitors coming from webmaster resource sites, such as linkpartner portals, tend to have better Alexa Ranking.

Some webmasters intentionally manipulate their ranking by accessing their own website(s) many times. When potential linkpartners see the good rankings, they'll be fooled, thinking that the respective site is worth exchanging links with.

The fact that web browsers can be set to start with a website whenever they are opened, also contributes to better ranking.

A website that has good Alexa Ranking is not necessarily more popular than another one that is less well ranked. It simply means that it got more hits from Alexa Toolbar-equipped browsers.

Even though it's not perfect, this instrument remains the main tool that lets webmasters determine an approximate site popularity "from outside", without having access to detailed visitor statistics.