May 16, 2011
Blogosphere Department
Gaming Alexa Blawg Rankings
About a month ago, although he expressed some doubts about the meaningfulness of blog ranking systems, Jamison Koehler published a list of 26 legal blogs along with their ranks according to the Alexa traffic rank tool. His blog's Alexa rank of 2,011,842 put him at number 12 on the list, just behind me at number 11 with my Alexa rank of 2,011,820.
Koehler took it like a gentleman:
Damn that Mark Draughn: Out of the tens of thousands of website rankings, Windypundit edges me out by a mere 22 places.
Although Alexa is a popular ranking system with advertisers and marketers, I think Jamison is right that these ranking systems are kind of meaningless. To prove it, I applied a few tricks that I'd heard could be used to game Alexa rankings, and then in a comment to Jamison's post, I offered to demonstrate:
I think Alexa is fairly easy to game. Check back in a month to see if I'm right.
That was a month ago today, and here's where everybody stands now:
| Rank | Blog | Alexa Rank | Previous Rank | %Change |
| 1 | Simple Justice | 184,379 | 1—232,838 | 20.812% |
| 2 | MyShingle | 321,305 | 2—311,844 | -3.034% |
| 3 | Popehat | 528,917 | 3—578,385 | 8.553% |
| 4 | Austin Criminal Defense Blog | 710,520 | 4—685,552 | -3.642% |
| 5 | My Law License | 831,052 | 5—981,356 | 15.316% |
| 6 | Windypundit | 871,076 | 11—2,011,820 | 56.702% |
| 7 | Defending People | 888,821 | 6—983,010 | 9.582% |
| 8 | Underdog | 1,263,596 | 7—1,378,706 | 8.349% |
| 9 | Koehler Law | 1,342,653 | 12—2,011,842 | 33.263% |
| 10 | A Public Defender | 1,402,114 | 8—1,480,538 | 5.297% |
| 11 | Norm Pattis | 2,489,081 | 9—1,687,668 | -47.486% |
| 12 | CrimLaw | 2,750,573 | 14—2,989,677 | 7.998% |
| 13 | Not Guilty | 2,838,498 | 10—1,692,511 | -67.709% |
| 14 | The Trial Warrior | 3,090,681 | 15—3,193,703 | 3.226% |
| 15 | Probable Cause | 3,322,239 | 13—2,543,238 | -30.630% |
| 16 | The Defense Rests | 4,325,093 | 16—4,137,986 | -4.522% |
| 17 | Infamy or Praise | 4,367,654 | 20—6,343,701 | 31.150% |
| 18 | Military Underdog | 4,860,028 | 22—6,954,695 | 30.119% |
| 19 | Gamso - For The Defense | 5,372,044 | 17—5,412,555 | 0.748% |
| 20 | Blonde Justice | 5,588,157 | 21—6,535,407 | 14.494% |
| 21 | Chandler Criminal Defense | 5,812,592 | 18—6,162,411 | 5.677% |
| 22 | Liberty & Justice for Y'all | 7,078,121 | 24—8,261,282 | 14.322% |
| 23 | DA Confidential | 7,376,561 | 23—7,266,259 | -1.518% |
| 24 | DC Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog | 10,855,009 | 25—8,860,327 | -22.513% |
| 25 | Chicago Criminal Defense | 11,067,409 | 26—13,712,119 | 19.287% |
| 26 | In Your Defense | 17,005,315 | 19—6,235,707 | -172.709% |
As you can see, a few people have moved around, but my blog Windypundit was by far the biggest gainer as a percentage of it's original position, jumping 56% or 1,140,744 places to land in the number 6 spot on the blog list. Other people jumped more places, but they both started and ended with Alexa ranks that were at least 2 million below mine, and they did not gain as much on a percentage basis.
I think this proves that I was able to game Alexa fairly easily. I may keep this going for a while longer to see if I can push it any higher.
1 Comments
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Double damn that Mark Draughn. Now you s over 400,000 places in front of me. Whatever you are doing to game the system appears to be working.