Comments on: Why The Alexa Widget Is BAD For Your Website

By: Hyder Mohammed

Hyder Mohammed — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 22:37:43 +0000

I’m using alexa widget on of my regional website, which gets lots of traffic. Fortunately my site is loading just fine like before

By: Manufacturers

Manufacturers — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 05:24:15 +0000

Hi!!!!!

Mr. Blogger can you help me my site’s Alexa ranking is increasing day by day. What can i do for improving my alexa ranking. My site url is http://www.businessimpex.com and how can i get more traffic on my site please suggest my in your post.

Thanks!!!

By: Arpan Kar @ Business Fundas

Arpan Kar @ Business Fundas — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 02:32:58 +0000

Frankly I was surprised in the difference of Alexa’s traffic and Google Webmaster’s recorded traffic since most of my traffic came from search engines….and hence did not register in Alexa and its rankings..

By: Khairi

Khairi — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 10:26:43 +0000

I am about to put it on my blog. Now, i think… may be I don’t need it.

By: Icon

Icon — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:59:09 +0000

What if we place the same alexa traffic widget on multiple site. Will it count the traffic of all and improve the ranking on original site(for which widget was issued) or will the find out and penalize?

By: Phil DeMassa

Phil DeMassa — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:41:23 +0000

The one thing I am wondering before I install a Alexa Widget is will it help me with Google search engines results as this is what I am after. I have a feeling it wont.
I came to this page looking to learn about Google’s view of the Alexa widget. But one thing I have learned here is that the Alexa widget can slow down page loads time.This is very interesting, if I install it it will be near the bottom of my page.Thanks for the info!

By: Victor

Victor — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:05:43 +0000

Thanks for noticing this trend! I was unaware of this occurring? Now I’ll have to do some reconsidering/repositioning the Alexa widget.

By: Inaki

Inaki — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:17:59 +0000

So, if I use this widget in an asp.net application, this can be a very huge problem. Thanks for the advice.

By: Qirani

Qirani — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 14:50:49 +0000

hmm.. so that’s why my website load very slowly.. thanks for this information.

By: theheatweb

theheatweb — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:49:05 +0000

Really? ok.. so I will try to follow your tip.. I dont want to slow down my blog because I know that many readers don’t like to wait. But does the alexa widget really improve the rankings?

By: Donna

Donna — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:19:10 +0000

Oh thank you for this information, although this article is old but I’m inspired for carefully put any widgets in my site.. But is there any light widget with useful info like PR and Alexa within one apps?

Best regards,
Donna

By: Velvet Blues

Velvet Blues — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:10:41 +0000

@Videogician, you have some good points there. It is rather unfair to use SEO because it can cause a website to rank highly, whether or not they should be ranking highly for certain keywords.

But when it comes down to it, how else will Google determine subject matter?

There really aren’t any better alternatives unless Google manually visits and regularly re-categorizes and re-ranks every site in its index. Unfortunately, that is not feasible.

By: Videogician

Videogician — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:51:17 +0000

It wouldn’t be right to open Webster’s Dictionary and find the word Bird before Animal. That’s what is wrong with most search engines. You can PAY someone to get your site ranked higher than their competitors. Then they come back and PAY someone to get a ranking higher than the original. Those who PAY get a better ranking. Like slipping the greedy door man $100 to let you into the $5 night club. Alexa rankings, Google rankings all can be “played with” or altered based on how well you can build your site to be Search Engine friendly. If a web site sells antique brass it makes no sense for them to become an expert on optimizing their site, or PAY to have an expert optimize or TRICK the search engine into ranking them higher. They should be ranked on their expertise of antique brass. It makes no sense to polish and shine the brass to be other than antique just so a search engine will rank it artificially higher. Google is wrongly skewed to favor those who know SEO rather than those who know their product. When will they rank a site based on the content alone? Then we all can remove the widgets on our sites and return to making the best antique brass available.

By: Velvet Blues

Velvet Blues — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:09:59 +0000

@Brian, the footer is a great place for widgets. I see on your site, you have a few of them in the footer and one at the end of the sidebar. So if they decide to act up, you website will still be functional.

I don’t really use widgets here, but I did finally decide to allow Gravatars on this website, only because, after much waiting and observation, I deemed their service reliable enough.

By: Brian D. Hawkins

Brian D. Hawkins — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:15:52 +0000

I’ve had the Entrecard widget freeze up my page loading several times when their site was down so I recently moved that and a couple others to the footer. I feel content should be above that type of promotion anyway.

By: Velvet Blues

Velvet Blues — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 03:27:40 +0000

@Yan, yeh, Alexa is hideous. You know, I am surprised that they’ve never updated the look of their widget. After all, it would encourage more widespread use.

By: Blogging Tips

Blogging Tips — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 02:51:36 +0000

To be frank, Alexa widget sucks in appearance and that’s the primary reason why I don’t display it on my blog. I’m not aware of loading issue either.

Yan

By: Velvet Blues

Velvet Blues — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:28:37 +0000

Well yeh, placement is everything. You’ve put all of those text links in a great location so they definitely have an advantage over the widgets.

By: Dennis Edell

Dennis Edell — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 20:16:44 +0000

Speed issues aside, I have received A LOT more sign-ups to both MBL & BC having the simple text links above the fold then the widgets below.

By: Velvet Blues

Velvet Blues — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:47:36 +0000

Oh yeh, you have quite a few goodies in your sidebar… You know, it really is a tradeoff, as most widgets do indeed help a website. (Your widgets, Bloglog & BlogCatalog, help make your site more popular.)

By: Miguel Wickert

Miguel Wickert — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:47:17 +0000

Velvet Blues

Interesting, I don’t have one on my site but am thinking about removing some of the badges currently on it. Useful tips. If it were me, I’d drop it! There’s more than just site ranking. You can’t always control site ranking so focus on the things you can control like site activity, your writing and so on. Thanks for sharing.

-Mig

By: Dennis Edell

Dennis Edell — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:51:05 +0000

Bingo! LOL

By: Velvet Blues

Velvet Blues — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:10:06 +0000

Haha. Thanks for the followup. Yeh, a combination of all three make for a successful blog…

You’ve just reminded me of this great article that I read a while back, it was entitled something like ‘Write for your readers, not for search engines.’ And it basically said that: ‘Readers make a successful blog, search engines keep them coming, and advertisers pay the expenses.’

By: Dennis Edell

Dennis Edell — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:44:57 +0000

Ut Ohhhh, sounds like I’ll have to keep an eye on things here.

Yep readers are first, then I’ll comb over it before publishing to throw in some search engine treats (or even delete some unnecessary) and everything combined racks up the stats to make advertisers happy…..that’s the general plan anyway. LOL

I tossed in an extra little nugget which I’d bet is very under-utilized.

By: Velvet Blues

Velvet Blues — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:49:18 +0000

@Dennis Edell, yes most people blog for money. So Alexa is VERY important, since advertisers often use that as a key metric. And yeh, installing the widget does have a positive effect on your rank.

And I’m glad that you threw in ‘readers’ as your #1 motivation for blogging. haha. Yeh, I agree with your top 3, but I won’t reveal the order in which they rank for me.

By: Dennis Edell

Dennis Edell — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:09:52 +0000

Oh and as far as “only for advertisers” is concerned, isn’t that the 2nd-3rd reason why we do anything on the blog? Assuming you wish to make money from it…

The 1st being for the readers of course, and you need to throw the search engines in there somewhere.

By: Dennis Edell

Dennis Edell — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:07:56 +0000

Hi Shirley, my comment here is 2fold. first and foremost, thank you for the awesome comments over at my place, and I hope to see you around more often!

I also followed your commentluv link as this intrigues me. I too have the widget installed to help traffic numbers (and it does work), but I’m glad to see I’m doing it somewhat correctly.

It’s not at the very bottom, but it is underneath all the other stuff on my sidebar. No load issues as far as I can tell.

By: Velvet Blues

Velvet Blues — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:47:44 +0000

Smallblogger, thanks for stopping by. Yes, many of the top bloggers do not have the widget, but you’d be surprised how many popular bloggers still throw it in with their ads and other buttons in their sidebars. And yes, I don’t think any one really cares for Alexa, except advertisers.

By: Smallblogger

Smallblogger — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:00:47 +0000

I don’t really see the importance of Alexa. The A bloggers don’t have the widgets installed on their site. I feel alexa ranking is important just for your advertising page and nothing else.

By: Velvet Blues

Velvet Blues — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 03:50:15 +0000

Hi Wei Liang, yes Alexa can slow down a site. Every month, it experiences intermittent downtime or sluggishness. And when this happens, all of the websites that display the widget are affected.

For this reason, we always suggest that the widget be placed at the end of the source code because websites load from the top down. If the widget is at the end, then the entire page gets to load regardless of whether or not the widget can be displayed.

Thanks for visiting and Tweeting.