I am a judgment broker who writes a lot. This article is my opinion about how one’s Alexa rank is not worth trying to increase.

The Alexa Internet company started Alexa in 1996, as a web browser toolbar named the Alexa Toolbar. It offered web site popularity ranking, with suggestions of what site to visit next, based on where other toolbar browsers had surfed. Alexa invented the Wayback Machine, and was a pioneer in web crawling, indexing, and storage.

Alexa was a very important contributor to the web infrastructure, and is now owned by Amazon. In 2009, Amazon “deprecated or discontinued” most of Alexa’s consumer services. The Alexa Toolbar that ranks web site popularity, still remains.

What Alexa did, and some of what it still does, is very important. However, the Alexa rank that appears on perhaps millions of web browser toolbars, is not important to watch. Google is number 1 (I bet you could have guessed that), Yahoo is # 4, Amazon is # 11, Comcast is # 198, most web sites are in the millions.

There are many SEO guides, software programs, pinging services, web services, and companies that offer, and can dramatically boost one’s Alexa rank. However, Alexa rank does not provide any new information. The actual effect of Alexa ranking is to impress some people who have installed the Alexa Toolbar.

Most companies that try to sell products and services to boost your Alexa rank have a common advertising pitch, that Google gives a strong preference to sites with a lower Alexa rank. I think Google notices web sites with content that is unique, valuable, well-organized, in-depth, and provides a real product or service.

Those selling Alexa-boosting products also brag about some other alleged benefits of having a lower Alexa rank. “People will be impressed and take your site seriously. If you get under a 100,000 rank, people will pay you to put banners on your web site.” Some mention the Nielsen Ratings, as if old TV watching habits could be compared with the dynamic web.

One’s Alexa rank most affects the ranking number on the (if installed) Alexa Toolbars on web browsers. I think it is a pipe dream to imagine that customers will do business if you have an Alexa rank of 250,000, yet will not do business with you if your Alexa rank is four million.

The biggest fantasy is, that if you pay a service or use a product to move your rank under 100K, you will get paid to put banners advertisements on your web site.

When you are at Alexa rank number 5,000, maybe people will offer to pay to put banners and ads on your site. However, if their ads do not work, you will not be paid much.

When your web site’s clicks are from robots, they only improve your Alexa rank, they do nothing else for you.

Having an impressive Alexa rank by itself, has nothing to do with whether anyone clicks a banner. Even if a robot clicks a banner, what counts is sales, not clicks.

The right way to get a low Alexa rank, is to ignore your Alexa rank. Improve your web site and grow your business as much as you can. That will lead to an accurate Alexa rank.

If you are lucky enough to get an Alexa rank of 1,000 by ignoring your Alexa rank, you will be wildly successful.

If you buy your way to an Alexa rank of 1,000, you will be noticed, but probably will not be successful.