A little bit of research and I came across a page on Jon Hughes' blog, "Notes from Phazm" that provides some evidence as to what is going on with the Alexa redirect function.

For those who haven't heard yet, the Alexa redirect now produces a 404 error.

For those who aren't familiar with this subject at all, allow me to explain. The Alexa redirect was a technique used by many to theoretically increase the Alexa rank of their sites. You would slap "http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?" in front of any link to your site, and it was believed that would send all link clickers through Alexa to be counted before proceeding to your site. So basically, the redirect was a trick used to make up for visitors who don't have the Alexa toolbar installed.

However, it turns out Alexa never officially admitted the redirect would do any such thing. In fact, there was apparently no official notice along the lines of, "Now you can use our redirect function." But somehow the technique became a fairly well-known practice on the web. Some people are adamant that it served no purpose, while others claim to have noticed a definite benefit to their ranks from using it.

For whatever reason, Alexa has removed the redirect link functionality. Jon Hughes actually went to the trouble of asking them why, and this is the response he got:

"Dear Jon,
Thank you for your message.
We no longer provide support for the redirect function.

Best regards,
Alexa Internet Customer Service"

How fitting that Alexa sent out a legitimate "Dear Jon" letter to let all us bloggers know it's breaking up with us! (At least as far as the redirect is concerned.)

I've just noticed this today, and maybe it's only a short-term thing. Then again, maybe not.

Theory #1: Alexa for some reason is not performing redirects, but not to worry, as this soon shall pass.

Theory #2: Alexa will never again perform redirects, as it has decided they are a bad idea.

My money's on #1, but this just goes to show you that using an Alexa redirect is indeed risky. If you were to build a redirect into your blog's "Home" link, a user wanting to check out your front page would instead be shown this:

Previously, I've explained how downloading the Alexa toolbar will boost your Alexa rank. Now I'm going to delve into how the redirect works.

It's pretty simple. You basically send traffic through Alexa's site, to yours. That way, anybody who gets redirected counts as a visitor, even if they don't have the Alexa toolbar. Using the Alexa redirect is a great way to make Alexa aware of all the visitors you have that Alexa usually can't keep track of.

This is the code for the redirect:

http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect? + your chosen URL

So to redirect to misinterpreted.org, the link would be:

http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?http://www.misinterpreted.org/

Great, so now that we have the code, how do we use it? There has been a lot of debate over whether it's a good thing to use it in links coming in from outside your site. Some people think the redirect will kill any transfer of PageRank, which would be bad. Others say that Alexa transfers PR no problem. But since the jury is still out, the risk is there. Another potential downside has to do with your ranking in the Search Engines. If you were to put a normal link somewhere out on the net, Google would eventually find it, and count it in your site's favor (usually). If you use the Alexa redirect, the theory (or fact?) is that Google wouldn't be able to see that link as being in your favor, and you'd lose out.

So, the Alexa redirect will boost your Alexa rank at the expense of PR and Search Engine placement.

But there are places you can use it where the negatives won't be a factor. Some bloggers change their in-site link to their home page, and use an Alexa redirect instead. There is some debate concerning whether the PR from all your pages can count toward your home page when you use a homepage Alexa redirect. My take is that there's probably not as big a risk concerning PR when using the redirect within your own site.

Another way you can use it is if you control a link that a lot of people use to get to your blog. If that link is very popular, you might try making it into an Alexa redirect. That way Alexa counts all the people who come through it, and you only have to change a single link.

If you decide to make use of this trick, keep in mind that every link you change will now rely on Alexa to work properly. So if Alexa goes down, the redirects won't work, and the links will be dead.

Update, 1-28-08: Looks like the Alexa redirect is gone for good.

I'll just run through a quick list of some solid ways to generate income on the web:

1. Build a web site that offers a valuable service, and run AdSense on it.
   

2. Build a web site with high Page Rank (PR) and Alexa rank, and sell Text Link Ads on it.
3. Build a decent web site or blog and sell it.
4. Start a blog and sign up with pay-to-blog programs. Each paid post will get you around $5 at the least, and much more if your blog has good traffic, subscriber numbers, PR, Alexa rank, and Technorati authority.
5. Get paid to write content for other web sites, blogs, and eBook sellers.
6. Write your own eBook and sell it.
7. Sign up with an affiliate program like Amazon or ClickBank and advertise their products.
8. Buy domain names with proven traffic and park them with a site like Sedo that pays you for every click an ad on your page gets.
9. Sell your stuff on eBay.
10. Sell your web design or coding skills on a job-by-job basis.

    Bonus:

11. Trade stocks or currencies (Forex) online.

Alexa is a company that tries to accurately measure web traffic to as many sites as possible. Their method is to watch user activity on browsers with the Alexa toolbar installed. So if someone visits your site without using the toolbar, Alexa doesn't know about it. But if someone else shows up, and they are using Alexa, your site will benefit. Here's how:

All websites start out with a crazy rank in the millions. A while ago it was around 5, now its closer to 10, and probably even higher. So if your site is brand new, it might rank at 11,000,000. That's the bottom tier, but it's better than "No Rank," which will happen if Alexa isn't aware of your site yet. What we want to do is improve our Alexa rank, because sites that rank higher are considered better, and more valuable in the eyes of potential advertisers.

There has been a great deal of debate about Alexa. Most people used to not care about the ranking system. It didn't really matter. Once advertisers started using it to judge sites, things changed, and many people began to complain because they believe your Alexa rank can be gamed. It is thought by some that there are definite ways to improve your rank. And that is true. One way is to download the toolbar. Another is to run a site geared toward webmasters.

On an episode of, "Family Guy," TV executives at a board meeting were discussing a recent problem on their network. Many people had phoned in to voice their protest. One executive summed things up: "We have received 20 phone calls from offended viewers. As you all know, each phone call represents a billion people, which means 20 billion people were offended!"

The issue with Alexa is it works in a similar way. Since Alexa only knows how many toolbar users visit your site, they use that number to guess how many total visitors your site has. That's right, guess. Can you see where this could be a problem?

If you ran a site that specifically catered to webmasters, many of your visitors, maybe even the widespread majority, would probably already be running the toolbar. So Alexa says, "Your site got 20 toolbar visits, so let's do a little math, and… OK, you must have received 20 billion total visits! Congratulations, and welcome to the top tier! Enjoy your flashy high rank."

What if you don't run a site for webmasters? Doesn't this tip the playing field against you? Absolutely. The system is flawed. But Alexa has acknowledged that the ranks aren't that accurate until you reach the top: "Generally, Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data we receive is not statistically significant. Conversely, the more traffic a site receives (the closer it gets to the number 1 position), the more reliable its Traffic Ranking becomes."

So how can you improve your Alexa rank in an honest way? By installing the Alexa toolbar on the browser you most use to visit your own web site(s). The toolbar could be considered a scorekeeper for the net. On your browser, it pays careful attention to the sites you visit, and essentially gives each site a vote on your behalf. So if you spend a lot of time tweaking your own sites, it will make sure to give them votes, too. But Alexa makes it clear that to keep things fair, a site will only get one vote per IP address per day.

People have learned that this tends to add up over time. If you consistently visit your site(s) with the Alexa toolbar, you'll likely see results.

However, some have also noted that the higher your Alexa rank is already, the less noticeable a change like this will be. If your rank is still in the millions, then you should probably see some improvement. However, if you're already in the hundreds of thousands, you might not get as big a benefit (if any). But my guess is that if you're doing that well, you've probably already got the toolbar installed!

People have tried to come up with other tricks to improve their Alexa ranks, but some are considered underhanded and risky. There have been stories about companies being banned from Alexa for trying to game the system. I view installing the toolbar so it can see your web site to be upright and honorable because it's a simple, non-deceptive one-step procedure, and because Alexa encourages people to download the toolbar.