A little over a month ago I was reading on some forums that having an Alexa badge on your blog or site will improve its Alexa score. Since the site supposedly ranks based on popularity and number of visits from people who have Alexa bar installed, I didn’t see how just having the rating badge could improve the Alexa rank of your site, so I decided to run a test and put the Alexa badge on DragonBlogger.com. I gave it thirty days to see if my site improved and factored in whether or not my traffic increased and here were my results.
DragonBlogger.com had an average Alexa rating of around 60k back in the first day of December and my rating has improved to just around 40k in the 38 days or so I have had the Alexa ratings badge added to the sidebar of this site. The thing is my blog traffic and visitors is only up about 2% for the month, so the increase in traffic does not account for the huge improvement in Alexa rating. In a second test, I installed the Alexa badge on one of my wife’s blogs and saw the Alexa rating improve by almost 100k within two weeks (drop from 800k to 600k) now this could be coincidence as the site has gained a little bit of traffic since then, but I have reason to believe that having the Alexa badge on your site does in fact improve the Alexa rating.
As a result I have now added the Alexa badge to all of my sites if anything but to help further these tests to confirm if it is actually true.
So, have any other bloggers been able to prove that Alexa increased as a result of having the badge on your site? Did you notice a difference, do you currently post your Alexa badge?
-Dragon Blogger
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Tags: alexa badge, alexa rank, alexa site reviews, blogging, blogging help, blogging information, blogging tips, how does alexa work, how to improve alexa rank, how to improve alexa rating, improve alexa rank, improving your alexa, improving your alexa score, ranking with alexa, Should You Have an Alexa Badge On Your Site, what is alexa score
January 18th, 2010 at 7:28 am
Not sure if it really helps to increase the Alexa Ranking.
As my brother started his Best travel pictures in the world blog in early September his first Alexa score has been in the millions (with Alexa badge). Since then and steady traffic of about 150 – 250 visitors daily the rank improved now to 108,000.
I think it’s more important to get a steady stream of traffic instead of one day much and another less traffic.
read Martin@The One Minute Guide´s article about Twitter: How to be on Google’s 1st page!
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January 18th, 2010 at 7:58 am
I don’t think there should be any reason for somebody’s blog ranking better after installing Alexa badge. In fact Alexa is the traffic ranking and if your site grows with traffic, Alexa ranking should improve and the reverse. So, in my opinion this is just a rumor only.
read Suresh Khanal@blogging and bloggers´s article about How a New Blogger Should Start? David Risley’s Suggestions!
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January 18th, 2010 at 9:19 am
I have been steadily improving on Alexa without the badge, but I think I might be foolish to not try adding the badge. I’m becoming a total blog rank whore. I’m so ashamed. Thanks for the extremely interesting information. It almost sounds like there could be a scandal.
Ray
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January 18th, 2010 at 10:57 am
My rankings were improving without alexa badge, but the same daily average traffic for 1 month was at 100k Alexa, and improved by 40k by adding Alexa. My average daily traffic in Analytics is still about the same.
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January 18th, 2010 at 10:16 am
This is sad. These people should not be doing this.
read Nicole@payday loans uk´s article about Loan Online: Payday Loans
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January 18th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Thank you for the information about an Alexa badge. I had no idea it could make that much of a difference. Thanks again for all the great information!
read Kristi´s article about Powerful Punching
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January 18th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Funnily enough, I was looking at Alexa earlier tonight. I loved seeing the improvement so I can see the attraction of adding a badge. However, if your average daily traffic is about the same, in real terms, the badge is irrelevant, yes?
I understand your point Ray but what you’re talking about is purely looking more popular for more popular’s sake. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that but I’d personally prefer to know that more people were visiting the site which seems not to be the case with this badge.
read Eleanor Edwards´s article about Day 14 in the Give A Brick House
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January 18th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
That is my point here, my traffic has not increased much according to Google Analytics, yet my Alexa improved drastically from 2 months ago. So Alexa isn’t completely affected by traffic increases, you can gain more traffic yet not see much improvement in Alexa, and sites with less traffic can have a better Alexa.
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January 18th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
My sites are too noob to really notice a difference I think, I’ve been tracking them and they’re improving a little each day right now on their own. I’ve added the badges anyways, but I understand everyone’s point. If there is no more “actual traffic” coming to your site, why would the Alexa ranking go up just from you having the badge and not the user having the toolbar? For that matter, if you can make a ranking go up simply by installing a badge, why does this ranking even matter? I’m new to this, so sorry if my comments sound stupid.
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January 18th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
I Personally believe that having the badge, improves the ranking of the site, I have experimented myself,when i changed to another theme, i failed to add the badge, the traffic for that month was infact higher than the previous months, but the ranking increased. From that day on ,decided to have Alexa badge for ever.
read Ramkumar´s article about ByteChip is now under the 1 lakh Alexa group
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January 18th, 2010 at 11:42 pm
[...] post: Should You Have an Alexa Badge On Your Site? on Dragon Blogger [...]
January 19th, 2010 at 11:08 am
Justin, when you mention the last 2 months then you have to compare your traffic to all the other websites and blogs in the ranking system of Alexa. And as you said your traffic has improved slightly over this period it just means that other websites/blogs have suffered from a loss of traffic.
I just can see that during Christmas and New Year my traffic declined more than usual and i remember that my Alexa Rank gets worse for two or three days. Since two weeks i’m back on track towards 50.000.
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January 19th, 2010 at 11:30 am
That is an excellent point, I didn’t consider that fact. Traffic overall may fluctuate on other sites which can affect your rankings in Alexa.
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January 19th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
One would thing that adding the Alexa badge means that Alexa would now not have to rely on people having the plugin installed on their browsers and so it gives them a more accurate reading of traffic on your site.
Having said that though, I have it installed on Wassup and my Loadofbullshit blog and my wassup rating is better although the other blog get’s more traffic. Go figure.
read Sire´s article about The Honest Truth About The SFI Affiliate
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January 19th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Do you consider Alexa important? If it isn’t an accurate measure of traffic?
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January 19th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Yes it works, but as you’ve seen, only in Alexa’s eyes.
read Dennis Edell´s article about Blog Move Is Imminent ! I’m Looking For Launch Partners…
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January 19th, 2010 at 7:41 pm
I heard the same thing awhile back and added the badge to mine now about a month ago and mine has also dropped. Great advice if you ask me not sure of the reason but maybe the backlink to them lets them know your their. I also heard the alex toolbar helps if you use it with your browser.
read Jared P Little´s article about David Risley Pre Launch Freebie’s
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January 19th, 2010 at 11:43 pm
No I’ve not added an Alexa badge to any of my sites. And I don’t think I’m likely to until the number displayed has fallen out of the millions.
BTW, please tell that this “centered comments” thing isn’t intentional.
Kind regards,
Steve.
read Steve Youngs´s article about The Life & Times Of A Financial Wizard
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January 20th, 2010 at 9:34 am
It isn’t, it was part of the theme, but I will look into seeing if I can align all the comments left. I don’t really like it either, it was just put on the backburner.
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January 20th, 2010 at 4:39 am
Good observation as I was reading a post by Techjaws earlier and from what he observed the Alexa ranking is not compatible with traffic count, more or less the same as your findings, great to confirm that now.
Haven’t added the badge as I have a FF plugin installed so I can follow up on it all these whiles. Interesting that a badge can improve the ranking in such short notice by it? Will wait for your further research on this. Perhaps it updates slightly faster or more sensitive with the traffic count.
Thank you for this info, very useful.
@wchingya
Social/Blogging Tracker
read Ching Ya´s article about How Blog Review Can Help to Improve Blog Traffic
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January 20th, 2010 at 9:42 am
Someone mentioned that the badge may collect and report count to Alexa, which may actually make it more accurate than Alexa having to estimate from people using the toolbar only. I am not sure if this is true or not though.
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January 20th, 2010 at 9:47 am
Do I consider it important…interesting question. Up to thuis new year I would have said you’re asking the worng person…I rarely looked at or cared much about any stats, lol.
Now though, I’;d say yes. Accurate or not, others (like potential advertisers) look at it as important…now whether that’s good or bad is up for grabs
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January 20th, 2010 at 9:49 am
I think you are spot on, if it’s a metric that advertisers use and is important for them, then it’s important to me. Bottom line is even the most noble bloggers would love to get some sponsorship and advertisers, even if you don’t want to write paid posts, most would love to have companies purchase some ad space.
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January 20th, 2010 at 10:25 am
I don’t know, Justin. A friend, not sure if I should mention her name, was just explaining some stuff about Alexa to me. I think it involved your ranking being improved if people with Alexa badges visit your blog. Not sure if the badge itself helps, although I’m guessing it does. But that’s just a guess. Thanks to Ching Ya for directing me to this post!
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January 21st, 2010 at 12:16 am
October 18th my Alexa was 6,548,786. I installed my Alexa badge late November, early December(wish now I had noted the actual date) and it has been steadily dropping each day. Today it was at 756,923. I think it does make a difference as far as the ranking goes, but since it has not had as dramatic a change to my bank account I don’t see it as being that much of a big deal.
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January 21st, 2010 at 6:39 am
Exactly right DB. Since you mentioned it, I don’t do sponsored posts, at least not from those type sites, due to Google slapping…
I also “care” about PR for the same reasons.
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January 21st, 2010 at 7:11 am
I do sponsored posts on this site and still have enough links and listings to warrant a PR2, so even though I did get slapped to a PR0, I worked my way back up. My poetry blog which doesn’t really do many sponsored posts is a PR3 but I have never had a blog with a higher PR than that.
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January 22nd, 2010 at 5:19 am
Google slapping is but one reason I don’t engage in sponsiored posting thrpugh those type sites, but I don’t want to turn this into a sponsored post comment section. lol
Btw, very nice work on the new comments.
read Dennis Edell´s article about Blog Move Is Imminent ! I’m Looking For Launch Partners…
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January 22nd, 2010 at 6:46 am
Thanks, I tweaked it yesterday. Finally got around to it, I am going to do a post about the plug-ins I used.
January 24th, 2010 at 9:21 am
I never put an alexa badge on my site until just this morning. I started my blog on the first of January and at that point if memory serves, my Alexa rank was about 6,000,000 and in the last 24 days from the first of January until now, I’ve gone up by 5,000,000 alexa rank points. My site is now at 1,055,415 which I think is cool. I didn’t think it would be that easy, but oh well. I hope to have at least a 100,000 rank by mid-late February.
But so far, no spike in traffic since adding the badge.
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January 24th, 2010 at 10:17 am
Right, you won’t see a spike in traffic, and in fact traffic alone does not make you a better Alexa rank. I rank better in Alexa than some blogs who get much more visitors than I get.
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February 2nd, 2010 at 10:00 am
This is the first time I am reading about this alexa thing, but I guess I will try anything to get more traffic.
I just installed commentluv on one of my blogs today, will see how that works out also.
Trevor Bandura@Increase Website Traffic´s last blog ..Ways To Increase Website Traffic With Articles
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March 30th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
I’d add the Alexa badge to mine but I think it would look just a little too cheesy.
I’m not a big fan of badges on websites but if what you say is true, that Alexa boost would be really great.
The Beginner DJ´s last blog ..5 More Tips For Ultra Music Festival
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April 11th, 2010 at 1:56 am
For me Alexa rank and PR rank are nothing more than a wee bit of fun. The real deal for me is increasing my visitor levels. Thats what gives me a BUZZ…
I currently have a PR of 4 and I’m close to having an Alexa rank of 200,000. But the truth be told they don’t mean jack to me, because my visitor levels are only in the high hundreds, which aint nothing at all. When I start getting thousnads of people come to my blog on a daily basis that will mean more to me than some flawed ranking systems.
William K Wallace´s last blog ..
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April 11th, 2010 at 8:21 am
Ironically you can earn far more money from a PR4 blog and paid links / reviews and posts than you can with a blog with 500 visitors per day and a PR2.
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April 11th, 2010 at 10:18 am
This is an interresting theory. Right now I don’t buy it though, I think these reports are just coincidence, there’s no reason why a simple badge should increase your ranking. It may help with Alexa tracking in some way and since it links abck to Alexa, it means free advertisement for Alexa. Could mean a rank boost out of curtesy but who knows…
Askarys´s last blog ..3D Logo Artwork for Kat Bella designed with Inkscape
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April 11th, 2010 at 12:41 pm
I know 16 bloggers now who all had better Alexa ranks within 30 days just by hosting a badge. I think Alexa tracks your blog stats with the widget and is able to get better accuracy than having to guesstimate without the widget.
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April 11th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
That is what thought. Looks like with a badge their tracking system is more acurate is it reports back to Alexa.
Interresting find, thanks for the article (before that I didn’t even know such a badge existed, heh).
Askarys´s last blog ..3D Logo Artwork for Kat Bella designed with Inkscape
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May 11th, 2010 at 9:00 am
Seem to be some mixed responses here. I guess as long as there are no negative reasons for adding the badge then I’ll give it a go and see what happens. I agree about the PR level too. A lot of SEO/advertising firms will structure pay scales for ads based purely on PR.
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