I was just wondering how important are these ranks? I see some websites brag about them, so I was curious is it really all that big of a deal?

Norfolk, Va. -- RaceRap.com passed another milestone this week as it has officially moved into the TOP 50 Motor sports web sites in the world, and the 15th largest American Motor sports News-site. Alexa, the leading authority on web site rankings, used by Fifth Avenue marketing companies to determine which sites are hot and which are not, ranks over 20 million web sites. For the last three months, RaceRap has averaged an outstanding 106,751 ranking, but in the month of January, unusual pre-season hits have boosted the rankings into the Top 50,000 web sites in the world! Generally speaking, a web site has "made it" when it reaches the 100,000 ranking or better. Nascar.Com for example ranks #1 in Motor sports, but number 3,726 in total rankings among the top 20 million sites. Other sites worth mentioning ahead of RaceRap are Jayski (ranking #15,810) and NHRA.com (#38,954).

"If the last month is anything like what this year will hold, I truly think that RaceRap will be in the top 20,000 worldwide rankings and in the top 10 racing sites in the world," says Bob Barney co-founder of RaceRap with his wife Tammy. "This news from Alexa has been terrific for us. A lot of hard work has gone into this and the readers keep growing beyond our wildest dreams."

Tammy Barney adds that "We have known for a long time now that RaceRap was huge, but these rankings just reinforce to everyone else, what we already knew."

RaceRap.com was founded in 1999 and has mushroomed over the years spreading nationwide, especially with a new partnership agreement reached with Fan1st.com earlier this year. Unlike many of the larger racing websites on the Alexa list, RaceRap is the single largest website of its kind that deals almost exclusively with local grassroots racing and smaller regional racing series; not Nextel Cup or other national series which generally have a larger fan base.

The Barney's and RaceRap have also been leaders in the efforts to clean up racing message boards and websites including suing one such board for copyright infringements and slander. "We need to clean up these sort of sites," says Bob, "It's nice to be in the top 50, but when the 4th biggest site on the net is 'fans against Jeff Gordon,' we still have a distance to go. The Cup drivers I guess are fair game, but local racers and sponsors do not need this garbage. It just hurts racing."

Though they will not stop those negative sites out there, their incredible 7 year growth sets the standard for the other reputable sites to model themselves after. The traditional American race season starts off each year in February with racing at Daytona which ranges from the 24 hours of Daytona to the Daytona 500! By March, RaceRap will be in the heart of their "season".

No, it's a very small deal. If an Alexa rating of 100,000 is considered a milestone to RaceRap.com, they need to set the bar a little higher, both in terms of what they consider to be a good Alexa ranking and the amount of importance they put on this.

Here's a great article from Art o Money (http://www.artofmoney.org/internet-business/whats-the-best-way-to-measure-the-rank-of-a-website/) in which the author manages to bring the Alexa ranking on one of his sites from 5,000,000 down to 400,000 using only his own browser, all by himself! Bots are programmed to do this as well.

Wow, this entire article was done purely in response to Alexa rankings? What a waste of space!

No, it's a very small deal. If an Alexa rating of 100,000 is considered a milestone to RaceRap.com, they need to set the bar a little higher, both in terms of what they consider to be a good Alexa ranking and the amount of importance they put on this.

Here's a great article from Art o Money (http://www.artofmoney.org/internet-business/whats-the-best-way-to-measure-the-rank-of-a-website/) in which the author manages to bring the Alexa ranking on one of his sites from 5,000,000 down to 400,000 using only his own browser, all by himself! Bots are programmed to do this as well.

Wow, this entire article was done purely in response to Alexa rankings? What a waste of space!

I'm glad you feel the same as I do.. I run a similar board in the same region. My site has only been around for 2yrs theirs about 8 I get members from their site on a regular basis, but it's hard to compete with an article like that..LOL I tried to find the original article but could not, makes me believe it was marketed by them and not wrote by Alexa..

I don't believe Alexa gives correct results anyways, as there is no REAL way of tracking the whole of the internets sites, is there...

Yeah I agree.. way too much put into it.

What is a good way to track? I currently use the Stats I get from AW Stats, is that any good at all?

Alexa can be manipulated very easy as far as the rankings so to me it is not a very good indicator of anything. Do not get me wrong if you pull your site from 100,000+ down to 40,000 that does say something but for dollars and everything it does not mean much. As with many page factors like alexa and google page rank they do not mean much unless you’re top in the serps. If you are #1 in google and getting traffic that converts to sales or what ever you are going after that is the best achievement page rank and alexa notta if you are not converting your visitors.

Tbh i never really take much notice of Alexa - the results of which are based on site traffic where visitors have the installed toolbar - needless to say the majority of visitors to your site probably won't have the toolbar installed. Only SEO and webmaster people tend to have it installed, and even though im a webmaster i don't bother with it!!!

I think Alexa is no.1 in website rankig there is also some smaller but Alexa is the best one.

The importance of a search engine is determined by the traffic it brings to your site, if most of your visitors come from Alexa, then it's important for you.

I have heard that Alexa use data from getting with alexa toolbar statistic.