An experiment with Alexa rank from the Land of Thunder Dragons

Do a Google search “How important is Alexa rank”. Almost every article reach in a conclusion -It is “ inaccurate and Alexa traffic can be greatly influenced ”. Yes, I too believe in this, but then also we care Alexa why? Something to be there to set the targets or can be taken as a competitive comparison tool. As an Amazon product Alexa is the most popular one among webmasters especially in Asian countries.

 

I got an opportunity to analyze Alexa from a country where internet penetration is very low. Presently I am here in Bhutan (A land locked small beautiful Asian country) for a short stay. As per the statistics report of Infocom and Media authority- Roayal Govt of Bhutan, as on 2010 there are only 6,100 broadband connections in Bhutan. As a webmaster, it’s my habit to check the Alexa and Pagerank of a site while browsing. After a couple of months stay here, I noticed an interesting fact- The sites I visit regularly getting good Alexa rank in Bhutan that is somewhat less than 100 !. I doubted is it possible? – Then I started some experiments. Visited some least popular sites regularly- the results were amazing; the sites got very good rank in Bhutan. Alexa rank of Techlineinfo in Bhutan is 17 – It was 9 before a couple of weeks. The drop was also due to an experiment. I removed the Alexa widget from the site for few days to check the impact.

The most popular Blogger of Kerala (India) , Berly Thomas (berlytharangal.com) wondered about his two digit Alexa rank in Bhutan through an article.

Here you can see the Alexa rank statistics of some sites I visit regularly (Not the complete list).

 

This confirmed that Alexa is monitoring the traffic through their toolbar only. Hard to believe? Within few weeks I can bring down your site’s Alexa Rank in Bhutan to a figure- less than 100!
We know Alexa is not important then why to care?

1. Setting some targets are always important for successful blogging. It is very much easy to get good Alexa ranking in the countries where internet penetration is very poor, but to get an overall rank less than 100 K is not an easy task. For that you have to work hard.
2. It has been observed that a lot of advertisers prefer to place ads in the web sites with good Alexa rank. Hence if you really want some bucks through advertisement, then you have to improve your Alexa rank
3. Blog directories- Most of the blog directories are using Alexa rank as an index for comparison.
4. If you have an Alexa rank less than 100 K, it will give some interesting graphical information about your site to analyze.