Website and blog owners often are concerned mainly about two numbers: Google pagerank often simplified as PR and Alexa traffic rank. The way in which these numbers are calculated and assigned to websites are not secrets and but the algorithm is usually dynamic.
Here’s a post where I talk about the Google pagerank algorithm
Google pagerank algorithm: It’s not a secret!
So what exactly are these numbers doing for website and blog owners?
Google page rank (PR)
Google offers a number ranging from 0-10, in the order of increasing importance, to all websites. An extremely good impressive website will have a PR 10 and a site which has not enough content, backlinks or a new site will have a very low page or 0 rank. So how does Google page rank affect your site?
The higher your Google pagerank, the popular your website is. This stat will attract advertisers for your website. It is also an indication that your site is reliable, has good content, has quality backlinks and so on.
Google page rank is calculated for each and every page of your website. However, the page rank of the home page is often mentioned, and the PR of other pages will be usually smaller than that of the home page. Yet, the PR of other pages contribute to that of the home page.
The way how Google calculates and assigns PR to a site is not well known, but there are some factors that contribute to that. Some of which include great content, enough content, quality backlinks, traffic, relevant and quality outbound links, the age of the site and so on.
Alexa traffic rank
Unlike Google’s page rank, Alexa ranks a website based on its traffic. It is actually called Alexa traffic rank. Alexa’s own definition of traffic rank is as follows:
The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis.
The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users)
Depending on the number of visitors to your site, basically. However, there are lots of debates about the usefulness and correctness of Alexa’s traffic rank for a website.
The main reason for this is, Alexa’s traffic rank can be boosted by installing the Alexa toolbar for internet explorer or using the Searchstatus extension for Firefox and setting your web page as your home page. Since there are lots of users who don’t have the tool bar installed but still view your website, these visits are not counted. Further since webmasters and tech savvy people have toolbars installed, tech related websites are easily getting good rank from Alexa.
On the positive side, Alexa takes care of the reach of your website and the number of quality backlinks too. Further, having a good Alexa rank will help you to get advertisers for your blog/website.
What is your opinion?
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Article by JaneSheeba
+Jane is the founder of Problogging Success. She is an expert blogger, consultant, freelance writer and blog designer. Don't forget to get your hands on two FREE Ebooks she offers.
Jane has written 270 awesome posts for Problogging Success.
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Personally I do not bother about either Google or Alexa ranking but I have a question. One of my friend’s website http://www.srimission.org attracts visits in several lacs as per Alexa but does not get a SINGLE response by way of mail or comments.This raises a question in my mind about the correctness of such ranking etc.
Yes, you are right. Alexa gives the ranking based on traffic. But the kind of traffic may vary depending upon the website and the visitors. Sometimes there are lots of visitors but none of them bother to leave a comment. They also do not provide any support or appreciation to the website from which they get useful information. But one can do nothing about this, sadly.
There surely is a debate on alexas credibility since their metrics are counted as “visitors who saw your site (with the alexa toolbar)” that itself is questionable . What makes both these factors important is that advertisers prominently look for these two stats before placing an ad on your site , so thanks for the info on how these work, it certainly helps.
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Hi Rohan,
Yes you are right, the toolbar plays a major role and that makes the number almost meaningless. But still, as you say a website’s value is decided by these numbers; unfortunate!
Cheers,
Jane.
Jane Sheeba recently posted..SEO For Targeted Traffic In And Out Of Your Blog
That’s good stuff. But the basic question remains that how alexa gives ranking and get to know about which site is gaining popularity and which is going down… how exactly it works and hence credible?
I think both Alexa ranking and Google ranking have their own place. Google ranking is generally a more stable reflection of your website’s performance since the algorithm used to calculate it contains extra elements apart from just traffic like content quality.
Google rank is far better than Alexa as it has more elements to it in its calculation.
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Hi George,
Google page rank and Alexa traffic rank really cannot represent the quality of a website. They are still however golden numbers. Another one similar to Google pr is Mozrank
Thanks for stopping by.
Cheers,
Jane.
Jane Sheeba recently posted..Google page ranking algorithm It is not a secret
Hi Jane,
to be honest, I am using the firefox extentions and addons rather than Google or Alexa. Basically, I have a fantastic SEO tool thanks to the firefox, just have a look at their Rank Checker.
Regards. George.
georgelivingstone recently posted..English Harbour Casino Bonuses in April
Jane,
I installed the Alexa toolbar a while ago and it has helped my blog ranking tremendously.
I wouldn’t say that Alexa is 100% accurate though. I read somewhere that the only real accuracy is for sites that have an Alexa ranking of 100k or less.
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Thanks for the information. Now i know that the higher Google rank, the popular the website is. In that way, it will attract advertisers on the website. and indicates site reliability, has good content, has quality backlinks and so on.
Thanks for the information. I agree on what you mention above that the higher Google rank, the popular the websites is. In that way, it will attract advertisers on the website which also indicated site reliability and good backlinks as well..
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Great information, it was needed, thanks .
Hi Jane,
High Alexa Rank and Google PageRank are required in order to attract advertisers. However these parameters does not ensure that whether your website or blog is popular or not. A blog or website is popular only when it receives good traffic and comments.
The Alexa Rank of my newly started blog, which is just one and a half month old, is 5,35,632 and Google Page Rank is 1. Though I get good number of visitors, still I don’t receive too many comments. So it shows how much Alexa and Page Rank is important.
Nice article..Have a nice time.
Hi Jane, My personal opinion about high Page Rank is that the site is well reputed in the eye of google so a higher page rank is must especially if you want to make your site an authority site. High page rank will bring higher number of advertisers resulting in higher revenue and higher profit to you.
However, as far as Alexa rank is concerned, it doesn’t provide a significat traffic as Alexa counts those traffic only which have installed Alexa toolbar and although you might be getting higher traffic, your Alexa rank might not correspondingly showing it.
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Both Alexa and Google ranks matter. They are not both entirely great ideas themselves, but they both add a) a layer of credibility to your website, b) increase your website’s worth to buyers, and c) allow services such as BuySellAds to evaluate your website’s popularity.
To me, for these reasons, they matter.
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I think it only matters insofar as it helps you rank for your keywords. What bothers me is that Alexa will see backlinks that Google doesn’t see. Irritating.
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I’d take PR over Alexa although I look at both. Google dominates the search engine market so that’s a better indicator than Alexa which relies solely on those using the toolbar so could be a misrepresentation. (i.e. a site with 100 visitors a day using the toolbar would look better than a site with 1000 visitors a day that don’t use it!)
I actually think that if I were to ever attract advertisors, transparency is essental and I’d give them temporary ‘view on’ access to my analytics account to see the viewing figures for themselves.
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How i get the Alexa plugin for Chrome….I found a lot but not get it…and after how muxh time alexa visited our site..
Alexa rank doesn’t matter a lot to me much but it plays a major role because advertisers often look for a good Alexa rank of a blog.
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alexa matters only to advertisers. the only thing bloggers and website owners should care about is making money from their visitors. If you are running adsense ads on you blog or site.. then why would you care about your rankings?
Even if they do not matter in SERPs , they have great role on maintaining the reputation of the blog. Also once we tend to increase the google page rank, we notice that our search values are also increased.
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I knew that using Alexa toolbar will help to increase traffic. But the problem is I need to ask some one out there to install this software in their computer which I believe is very difficult. In fact, I already try to ask some of you friend to install it and finially they do remove it from their computer. Thus I think using Alexa toolbar to get some traffic is a little difficult.
my website the702news.com went from 8000 000 to 4000 000 having the alexa tool bar
thanks for the tip really appreciate the info
I am still learning to understand the google spider. Sometimes I will write an excellent article, build links back to it and then it loses rank on search. I don’t understand why that happens.
Well i always check my alexa rank. I love doing this. Since you can see daily updates in alexa, it feels great to see your blog going high.
Google updates the PR every 3-4 months. I am planning to get PR 3 in the next update. And i am trying to build a solid alexa rank too.
I know wehn alexa rank will be good and i will have better more number of visitors and in a way ore profits. Thanks for sharing this article.
Sanjib
you are right but in my blog rockpaki. com has alot of traffic but i have no rank as compared to my competetors
please suggest me anything
if one crosses 1 lakh page views per year then only there is enough data for better alexa rank
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