The Alexa rankings are a ranking of websites

Webmasters always want to know how well that their internet site is doing in comparison with their competitor's web sites. However , nobody can really get the backend details of their competitors to find out how traffic which a web site is getting. You can see how good that they're ranking in the search engines, but you do not know how many visitors that they're getting. One place that lots of webmasters use is the traffic rankings available from Alexa. They use information gathered from users that have their toolbar set up in the web browser and record information on the websites that they go to. Based on this information they give a rating of all the web sites based on the number of visitors. A major problem with the ratings is that they are biased towards the sorts of sites that those who are more tech experienced are likely to go to, as it is only these types of individuals who tend to install the toolbar. Those who are less tech savvy, tend not to set up the toolbar and in all likelihood usually visit different types of websites.

The issue with the Alexa Ranking is that it is so easy to fake that you really have no idea if what you view is real or if it has been faked by your competitor to look better than it really is. All you have to do to unnaturally inflate the Alexa ranking is install the toolbar on your computer and just visit your site several times every day and then watch as your Alexa ranking gets better. Better yet, get a few colleagues to do it as well. There are even paid providers that will do that for you to unnaturally improve the ranking. This is why the Alexa ranking number is possibly not worth spending a lot of time on as it is so easy to manipulate.

A final word on the Alexa rating is that it is just that, a ranking of websites based on visitors that is easily faked. No internet search engine uses the Alexa ranking to rank websites, so there is no advantage to having a good Alexa ranking.