My ranking is dropping like crazy and I have no idea why. My ranking went from 340,000 to 2,166,236 within just a month in a half. And it’s like the more visitors I get, the more my ranking drops. What’s going on?
The only huge change I can remember making before this happened was adding some codes to my .htaccess file about two months ago.
Install alexa toolbar on your browser… that would solve your problem…
not looking at the htaccess code, I leave that for others.
you need to understand that Alexa doesn’t know your real traffic, it only guestimates based on people who have their toolbar installed. I highly doubt many of your users will have that toolbar installed, the demographic is highly biased towards web professionals and you’re probably the only person who’s browsing your site regularly and got one.
Jumps like this are not uncommon if you start browsing your own site less frequently and/or no new regular users with a toolbar arrive on your site - nobody really knows how Alexa actually calculates the traffic.
To sum up, don’t sweat over it until you’re at least in the top 100,000 (you can start bragging when you’re top 10,000), and nobody really cares.
Here’s my .htaccess code:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
#uploaded files
RewriteRule ^(.*/)?files/$ index.php [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.*wp-content/plugins.*
RewriteRule ^(.*/)?files/(.*) wp-content/blogs.php?file=$2 [L]
# add a trailing slash to /wp-admin
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^.*/wp-admin$
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ $1/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule . - [L]
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(wp-.*) $2 [L]
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(.*\\.php)$ $2 [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]
<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>
<Files 403.shtml>
order allow,deny
allow from all
</Files>
It’s weird. I worked hard on my site and everytime I updated it, it went higher and higher in the ranks. Now all of a sudden that I’m getting even more traffic, it drops in the ranks as opposed to rising in the ranks. I also looked at my competitors and although they’ve dropped a hundred points or so, their drops weren’t as dramatic as mine.
That’s ok Smith. Just like what they have said, it’s an inaccurate tool. What was the code you added? But, as I can see, that code wont hurt much your ranking. Maybe, all you need to do is build more quality links.
Alexa is pretty useless and inaccurate for any site not in the top 10,000.
I wouldn’t worry about it, Alexa is a very skewed indicator.
What did you add to your .htaccess?