Alexa is widely used: Pay Per Post, Text Link Ads and many other service use this to estimate traffic. Today, I’ll explain the common rank gaming method — which I will call “The Alexa Project”, that is known to work. I’ll also describe why Alexa Projects generally work only for a short time and then describe what’s required to make them work forever .
The Alexa Gaming Method
A well known method to trick Alexa into believing you have high traffic relies on four things:
- A group of friends who agree to work together. This group might call themselves the “Alexa Project”.
- All friends installing both Alexa and “Linky” extensions to their browsers. (The Alexa toolbars are available FireFox and Internet Explorer. Linky is available for Firefox.)
- At least one friend sets up a web page to act as a “hub”. This web page includes links to every blog in the Alexa Project.
- Using their Alexa browser, all friends in the Alexa Project agree to visit the hub regularly and automatically open every link on the page, either manually, or automatically using their Linky Tool bar.
The behavior of an individual participate is illustrate to the right. Basically, the visit the “hub page”, and click open every link. In principle, they have visited their friends site, and so, in some sense, their friend deserves to have Alexa give credit for the visit.
So… it’s not really an unfair right?
Yes, the method is, in fact, unfair. After all, what everyone who joins the project knows is that somewhere between 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 100 people have Alexa toolbars installed. (I tend to think the value is roughly 1 in 500, and I’ll use that number from now on.)
So, if a blogger can get 10 friends a day to visit using Alexa toolbars, Alexa credits the blog with equivalent of 5,000 visits by “random” people. By banding together, a group of 10 people who visit each other blogs every day can seriously drive down their Alexa ranks. (With Alexa, #1 is the best rank. )
Does this really work?
Yes. This drives down your Alexa rank.
In fact, this method relies on Alexa measuring traffic exactly the way Alexa tells people it measures traffic. If someone visits using an Alexa browser, Alexa counts it. Otherwise, Alexa doesn’t count that traffic.
In case you are wondering why you can’t just reload your blog over and over and over. Well, Alexa only counts any individual IP once. You can give yourself one “Alexa hit” a day. After that, you need real visitors with their own Alexa bars installed.
What Goes Wrong?
Frailty, thy name is “Alexa Project Participant”. Over time, each participant begins to neglect their job. (And it is a job — unless you would have visited the blog itself to read that blog anyway. But you wouldn’t; otherwise, no one would need “The Alexa Project”. )
Anyway, maybe the unreliable participant visits on Sunday, but forgets to visit on Monday. Then, they forget again. A few more forget to visit. Eventually, everyone begins to see their Alexa ranks degrade.
At that point, the more reliable members get discouraged: They know they are giving their friends a boost, but their friends aren’t returning the favor!
Soon, everyone stops. And everyone’s Alexa rank starts to rise up again.
Sometimes people start to regroup and try to convince others to hold up their end of the bargain. That can work for a while, then the whole cycle begins again.
How could the Alexa juicing be made to last forever?
Why, by writing plugin! 
What would the plugin need to do:
- Permit users to enter their friends blogs into a database.
- Create a button that lets users auto-visit their blogs from their own blogs. The p
- Include a script that detects their friends visits. (This can be done by reading referrers and logging the ones that match their friends blogs.
- Once underway, the blogger using “You Visit, I Visit” would click a button and only visit people who actually visited them! (And if the other bloggers has installed the plugin, well, they know they’ll get a return visit. )
- And everything should be fairly invisible to outside observers, because, well… There are people who claim this is “just visiting their friends blogs” and “just getting credit for traffic”, but there are others who bet to differ.
