The Alexa ranking’s always a controversial topic.

Zach, head brain at DomainSocial, frequently tells me it’s easily manipulated.

So’ve a number of other experienced Internet guys.

It was useful for Jason to mention it on his Off the Top of My Head blog.

And more usefully, see if he could abuse it.

In case you weren’t aware book e-tailer Amazon acquired Alexa in 1999.

A number of people promote/publicize their Alexa rankings (myself included).

In fact, here’s my latest stats.

So what does this mean?

After a period of testing detailed in Jason’s post: Manipulating Alexa Isn’t What It Used to Be

Jason comes to the conclusion “the testing I did convinced me that Alexa is not as easily manipulated as it used to be. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be able to be manipulated at all.”

Furthermore, he postulates “So if the above is actually true and I am of course now one of the believers, is the previous myth that Google uses a bit of Alexa ranking in its algo still so dismissible? If it is no longer so easy to manipulate and the only existing problem is comparing sites in different industries, it’s not a stretch that Google would use it, even if as a very minor part of the algo.”

I doubt the debate will be resolved easily and you can be sure that it’ll be an endless topic of discussion just like the “AMD is better than Intel” threads you see on the webmaster forums.

My personal stand?

I think Alexa has the potential to be manipulated to some extent (If you put your mind to it, you can manipulate almost everything).

Aside from the Google Analytics and the PR, Alexa can be used as a rough gauge of your traffic.

You can also check your web hosting stats, especially if you have an AWstats package. (and again some will say this can be manipulated…)

However, as an affiliate marketer, the value of transactions on my blog is a more useful metric.

As Shoemoney would say ‘Skills to pay the bills”.

What do you think?