DEVTRENCH Alexa Rank on the Rise and the Sites That Helped

I just about crapped my pants yesterday when I went to my blog on Alexa and saw...a graph!! In the last three months this site has seen some pretty good growth, but I was still surprised to see a graph since this site is not in the top 100,000 yet. The "Not in top 100,000" image was all I'd ever seen before so I just assumed that before they started to track your site with a graph you had to be in the top 100,000. This is apparently not true since my rank today is 440,995. For reference, this site started at over 3,000,000 in June, and the last time I reported on my rank in July it was at 1,800,000.

I know that a lot of people think the Alexa rank is stupid, and I can see their point, but here is why I'm interested in it:

• I think it is a good measure between sites that are in the 'geek' genre. For instance, quite a few visitors from John Chow dot com, now visit here as well. It's been said that only geeks like webmasters use the Alexa toolbar, so on sites where there is a high geek traffic flow, you'll get better results from Alexa. You could say that Alexa is a kind of Geek-o-meter.
• Some services, such as Text Link Ads, use your Alexa rank. In TLA's case, it has a direct impact on how much you can sell ads for.
• It's fun! Well, I think it is fun to work towards lowering this number. I get motivated by challenges, especially ones that are traffic related :)

To the left is a fun graph comparing this site to johnchow.com and doshdosh.com (the two sites that have helped me lower my Alexa rank). This site is the blue blip in the lower right hand corner. So what posts have helped me to keep lowering my score? It was mostly this one at DoshDosh:

20 Quick Ways to Increase Your Alexa Rank

That post is probably the most informative post about Alexa that I've ever read since it tells you what Alexa is, and how to increase your rank. This one from John Chow is good to:

Why Alexa Is Worthless

These two posts, and a few others on John Chow are the only information that I've been using to increase my rank. If you follow the strategies in the DoshDosh post, I know you will see results. Maki really knows what he is talking about.

Just for fun, here are some Alexa javascript widgets you can get for your site: