Nongeek Perspective

I've been reading many articles about Alexa widget lately and, after reading The Controversy Over The Alexa Widget last week, I decided to do more research and my own experiment. So, in this article I try to expose my opinion, a short background of the controversy with the different theories I've read about and my idea for an experiment.

I would like to begin putting clear my opinion on the subject: I really think all that widget idea is a myth. Here are some reasons:

• Is not convenient for Alexa to gather data from the widget. It's very simple, their stats would be highly biased if they'd collect data from the widget, making their data useless.
• None of the top Alexa rankings shows the widget. Is not enough evidence?
  
• Any improve in the ranking after installing the widget on a site might be due to a coincidence or a bug in the Alexa side. Yes, I think it's probable their system had (or have still) a bug that cause some widgets loads to count as valid traffic.

Some background

The problem is simple: Many bloggers and webmasters say that they have improved their Alexa rankings by installing an Alexa widget on their sites. However, it is also said that such a thing is just a myth because the toolbar is the only way Alexa gathers traffic data. In fact, Mark from 45n5.com received that answer directly from Alexa. Alexa widget does not help ranking. Nevertheless, the controversy goes on due to some weird facts:

• Many webmasters have reported a ranking boost after installing the Alexa traffic widget.
• Other webmasters noticed a worse ranking while using the widget.
• Some not SEO-related blogs showing the widget seems to have improved their ranking (see theory 3 below).
  

There are some theories that try to explain why Alexa widget seems to affect the ranking of the website it's installed on.

1. Alexa might be gathering data from the widget. Officially, Alexa widget only shows the ranking. However, many people think that's not true. Empirical data collected from different experiments says that having a traffic widget on a site seems to help ranking. See this comment on Entrepreneur's Journey for an example.
2. Sites with Alexa widget have better rankings because people click on it. Again, Alexa says they only gather data from users with the toolbar installed. So, clicks on the widget don't contribute to a better ranking.
3. Alexa ranking is better with the widget active because it attract people with the toolbar installed in their browser. Most webmaster seems to have installed the toolbar and it's likely they're looking for tips that help to increase the traffic in their sites. This theory it's applicable to blogs related to SEO, but it fails to explain why blogs not related to the subject seems to get a better ranking. It also fails to explain why some sites seem to get a worse ranking.
4. Visitors tend to install the toolbar if they see the Alexa widget. So, they will gather data from that website the next time they visit it. This seems to be the most plausible theory. However, it's weak because really few people seems to install the toolbar just because they see a little box with a number. I think this would be different if webmasters wrote an article recommending to installing it.

My little experiment

I have decided to do a little experiment to help filtering the noise. I will show the widget only in this post, contrary to the general practice of placing it on the sidebar. With this, I hope to detect some correlation between the number of visits this post receives and the possible improvement (if any) in the Alexa ranking, in a try to verify if theory 3, mentioned above, is valid.

Although this blog contains several posts related to blogging, I think it's not a SEO-related blog. Further, the most popular posts here concern to Linux. So, I guess the data collected from this experiment should be valid, but not very scientific yet.

So, here is my widget with my embarrassing rating:



Do you feel compelled to download and install the Alexa toolbar after seeing it? :-D
Do you have the toolbar installed already and your looking for improvements in your website rating?

I hope you all can help me to detect if that theory is true.


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