I see Alexa ranking being updated today and there is only a gradual increase for me. I know my blog does not have much traffic so I don’t consider this normal or abnormal.
A lot of people complain that Alexa’s new ranking system which was modified in April is still not perfect. These people saw their Alexa ranking crashing and has not climbed back to its previous high since.
It has been said that Instead of capturing only those who installed the Alexa toolbar, there is now a wider spectrum of users habits being reflected. Do you think Alexa ranking accurately reflects the interests and surfing habits of the broader population of Web users?
For me, it makes little difference as my Alexa ranking has been rather constant, meaning hovering around 750k.
Advertisers have to lower their expectations when it comes to alexa ranking. John Chow reported on his site a change in ranking system by alexa.
Like everybody else, his blog is affected but he has little complaints. Because his blog has been established to such a popularity level that PR and alexa ranking doesn’t hurt his earnings any more.
Previously, Alexa only consider users who downloaded and installed alexa toolbar. This did not sufficiently capture the traffic data as certain segments, like make money or affiliate marketing tend to show higher alexa ranking than technology websites where the users are more savvy and believe the alexa toolbar to be nothing more than a piece of spyware.
No doubt, the change is a positive move as the ranking is now a more accurate reflection of internet traffic for blogs and websites. But as bloggers, we have to do more promotion and marketing to drive traffic which can help us to push or even maintain the existing alexa ranking.
At this point of time, I think advertisers who strictly look at alexa ranking to determine a blog’s popularity have to appreciate the change, else a lot of websites may suffer as a result.
I have wondered why some posts get dugg more than others. It seems that there are groups of digg users who help some articles to score and get onto the front page.
I first knew about their presence from forums and you can join these groups and send articles to them for some digging. Bloggers can benefit from the exposure in terms of adsense earnings, traffic, subscribers, alexa ranking, back links, etc.
Certainly, this is manipulation of articles (and even cheating) to gain popularity, but I found that the standard of diggs have not decreased substantially as a result. There is a bury button if you do not like the article for either its junk or excessively-promotional content.
Overall, I still enjoy the home page reads. What is your experience of digg?
