Alexa Redirects: I Told You So!

Back in August, I mentioned how redirecting with Alexa is a bad linking strategy and something that's happening right now proves it.

I was scanning my stats for search terms and phrases like this started appearing: Alexa redirects not working. Apparently, someone clicked on the redirect URL I included in that article and now it shows up as an outbound link too. I tested the link and guess what happened?

http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.untwistedvortex.com/ == The requested URL /redirect was not found on this server.

I don't know if it's temporary or permanent but if it's permanent, quite a few bloggers are going to have a whole bunch of dead links on their hands — especially if they're using the links internally. In the imitable words of Duke Nukem, "Ooooh, that's gotta hurt."

Articles With Related Content:

• Redirecting with Alexa is a BAD Linking Strategy
• Show Appreciation By Linking To Your Backlinkers
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for WordPress, Part 1
• Viral Linking Project 2007-09-01
• Alexa is Pure, Unadulterated Crap

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January 11th, 2008 By RT Cunningham | Categories: Marketing | Tags: Alexa, services | Full Article Feed | Summary Article Feed | Comments Feed | Full Articles by Email | Respond | Trackback URL

2. Matthew Jabs on January 11th, 2008 at 4:12 pm (Reply)
   
   

   Richy Cunningham?

   Matthew Jabs's last blog post..Ron Paul in 2008

   2. RT Cunningham on January 11th, 2008 at 4:20 pm (Reply)
      
      

      You're cruisin' for a bruisin', Matt.

   3. MrCorey on January 11th, 2008 at 7:43 pm (Reply)
      
      

      He means it, you know…

      MrCorey's last blog post..An Hour?s Difference doesn?t Seem Like a Lot

3. Jon Hughes on January 12th, 2008 at 2:00 pm (Reply)
   
   

   This is the first post I have seen addressing this downage… it actually started on Thursday morning.

   I emailed them, and the tech support didn't even know what the Alexa redirect url was, or that anything was wrong.

   Hopefully it's not permanent, simply because of all the links out there that do use it. Bad practice or not, it really sucks.

   It's kinda like using tinyurl - when tinyurl goes down, so do millions of links.

   Jon Hughes's last blog post..Easy as Pie - Ajax Requests

   2. RT Cunningham on January 12th, 2008 at 2:06 pm (Reply)
      
      

      I don't promote the use of tinyurl either.

      I read an article a while back that included an official position of the folks at Alexa. The redirect was designed for their use only and people discovered it and latched onto it. It was made clear that it had absolutely no affect on Alexa rankings as promoted by various blogs.

4. Friedbeef on January 13th, 2008 at 8:51 am (Reply)
   
   

   Yeah - redirects helping are a total myth

   http://www.friedbeef.com/2007/08/11/debunking-popular-alexa-myths/

   Friedbeef's last blog post..Friedbeef’s Tech Readers Help to Change The World