Let me start off by saying, yes, I know that the data collected by Alexa is only slightly better than useless for determining anything about ranking or positioning when it comes to Search Engine placement.. That said, there are a lot of people that use Alexa and it’s worth taking even a couple of minutes to verify and correct things listed there..

A couple weeks ago I got a call from the guys at ForTheWeb letting me know that they got a call from someone wanting to advertise on one of my websites.. Advertisers are cool, but why call my ISP, and how did they even get that number?? It seemed to me that hunting down an ISP and calling them when the contact info is right on the website was rather tedious.. Well, it turns out the guy uses the Alexa toolbar..

You can click on the info button on the Alexa toolbar and it will spit out names, addresses, and phone numbers for the website you are on.. The problem is that they scrape that info from the domain registration.. Which in many cases is your ISP, your registrar, out of date, or whatever.. The folks at Alexa, realizing that their semi worthless data is constantly made even more worthless with misleading data like this has also provided a way for you to update that info yourself.. It’s pretty straight forward actaully..

Head over to Alexa Site Information Editor and enter your URL.. Then upload the info.txt file they provide and let them crawl your site.. A few days later your site contact info should appear properly in the Alexa toolbar..

Is this going to have huge repurcussions on your website?? Probably not.. But it would have made it easier for at least one advertiser to get a hold of me.. And for that alone I think it’s worth the 5 mintues to check and update your sites in Alexa..

~Fey