if your alexa rank falls in a forest and no one’s around, does it make a sound?

The proverbial forest with no one around, in this situation, is simply my little corner of the internet. And, my Alexa rank is falling (which is a good thing). But can anyone else hear it besides me? Did it, in fact, make a sound?

Alexa 101. At its most basic, Alexa, the Web Information Company, ranks most of the websites that exist in the world (specifically the sites that are part of the Alexa community – which includes a very large number). You want your rank to get lower and lower, as close to #1 as possible. Yahoo! holds that precious spot, Google is #2. Alexa’s ranking algorithm is based on the usual suspects: users’ interests and surfing habits, links, traffic, etc

According to their blog: When Alexa began displaying rankings in 1998 it was with the goal of showing Alexa Toolbar users how popular any given site was within the Alexa community. We generated the rankings through an analysis of Internet usage by people who use the Alexa Toolbar. Since that time we’ve been delighted to see that the Alexa Rankings have become a yardstick by which website popularity is measured.

Top 100K. Because there is so much movement on the web – especially when you think of the millions of websites on different topics and at so many varying levels – Alexa maintains that they can only be sure of the rankings for the top 100,000 sites.

This makes the rest of us eager to break into the top 100,000. I’m not going for #1, that makes no sense for me whatsoever – I’m not Yahoo! and don’t really strive to be. But, I can look at my rank compared to that of the other people in my niche, and this gives me a gauge. I use the Alexa Toolbar on every website I visit as a valuable glimpse at where the site lands and how it compares. Of course it doesn’t give me traffic stats – but the difference between a site at 500,000 and 5,500,000 is palpable and informative.

My rank. I certainly watch my own rank, and I love to watch it fall. It provides me with feedback on my own progress. And, it brings me back to my original query: There are only so many people in this world that care about my Alexa rank (and none of them live in my house). Where do I go for that victory lap, when (like yesterday) I broke into the 300,000’s?

I decided to come here because my Alexa rank fell and no one was around, but I heard it and I thought I’d go ahead and make my own sound. So…BOOM.

 Update: Well, backdate really. A ‘friend’ encouraged me to add a little note to this post which is that my rank started at 6.5 million…in January. So in 8 months, I went from 6.5 million to 391,063. Not bad people, not bad. I guess this goes to show that when you do things the genuine way – posting, participating, commenting, linking out, NOT spamming, providing good (according to all of you) content – you reap the rewards. Thanks to all of my readers, commenters and linkers.