When a visitor goes from one real estate website to another, participants in the Alexa program allow that information to be collected and analyzed for "related links" and traffic estimates.

Here's why this can be beneficial for website owners. You spend a lot of time on your own site, right? (If not, you probably need to talk to me about your website!) With Alexa, you can add your own traffic to your own website into the Alexa database, as well as the other real estate sites you visit on a regular basis.

There is evidence—not rock solid by any means, however—that Google uses Alexa rankings, at least to some degree, in their search algorithms. So boosting your Alexa rankings by participating in their volunteer system of website statistics can be one tool in your toolbox to boost your overall Google rankings over time.

Note that Alexa rankings are subject to unfair "gaming" by software cheat systems, and Google actively penalizes sites that try to unfairly game its index. So do yourself a favor and stay away from Alexa boosting software that basically gives your website fake traffic. Not only is it dishonest, it can hurt you in your search ranking if and when Google detects it. You can actually be banned from Google's index for attempts to spam its index, and rightly so.

I want accurate search results when I go to Google for information, and your goal for your website ought to be to make your site show up on its merits. (Of course, I know how to build your site with all the "merits" you need to perform on the search engines!)

Privacy buffs may be uneasy with this technology, but if you own a website that you want to rank higher on the search engines, you should consider researching it more to overcome your privacy fears. All data collected is non-personally-identifiable. It is simply valuable information for determining the topical relevancy of a website. Think of it like Amazon's "People who bought THIS also bought THAT." (In fact, Alexa is an Amazon.com company.)

I'll tell you how to participate in Alexa's volunteer system safely and effectively. It's actually quite easy for both PC and Mac users now. All it takes is downloading and installing the Alexa toolbar.

For years, the Alexa toolbar was only available for Internet Explorer. Now, Alexa has a plugin callewd Alexa Sparky for Firefox that works on both PC and Mac Firefox installations. Since I'm a Mac guy, that's what I use. (I do see some performance loss when switching tabs, but it's worth it to me.)

Besides, Firefox is by far a better browser than IE, so you really ought to consider switching.

Download the Alexa toolbar for PC or Mac, Firefox or IE

Note to real estate agents: Keep your Internet Explorer installation, because some MLS platforms are still dependant on IE. If you decide you like Firefox, make it your default browser, then open up IE when needed.

Another note: There is a healthy debate about the rumored benefits of Alexa, but in my experience, it won't hurt you to use it honestly, and can help you a great deal. You can read both sides of this issue on this thread from the Webmaster World forum.

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