Alexa makes big changes to ranking system

[Larwee]

I never was an Alexa fan because it was far from accurate and much too easy to manipulate. The Alexa toolbar was also installed by a larger percentage of the population in some countries than others. It gave very misleading high rankings for technology related sites because of the large use of the Alexa toolbar by people with technology sites and interested in technology related sites. The same is true for webmaster related sites.

A person could install the Alexa toolbar and just by visiting his or her own site frequently could greatly improve the Alexa ranking even if he or she was the only person visiting the site. That is so ridiculous that it is almost laughable. That is only one of the many methods of manipulation that were used. Many people depended on these flawed rankings when buying a site.

Alexa has finally make some very big changes to improve the lack of accuracy in the old system. They haven't been specific as to what those changes are other than it will no longer be completely based upon their toolbar. They are now using multiple sources.

The people doing most of the complaining now are those who had inflated rankings due to the numerous flaws of the old ranking system.

Presently the historical data is only available for the last nine months, but Alexa says they have plans to recalculate the historical information.

It was good that Alexa stated the obvious:

Alexa toolbar users' interests and surfing habits could differ from those of the general population in a number of ways

Time will tell if the changes produce more accurate rankings and if Alexa will now be considered to be reliable. Here are links to more information about this big change:

Alexa - Web Discovery Machine: The Alexa Ranking system has been changed

http://www.alexa.com/site/company/announcement

MediaPost Publications - Alexa Makes Big Changes To Traffic Ranking Protocol - 04/18/2008

Exploring beyond the toolbar, Alexa overhauls rankings | The Social - CNET News.com

Alexa changes ranking system - More sources than the toolbar - TECH.BLORGE.com

[Linda Buquet]

Ya I went from 18,000 or 29 to 43,000. Not happy about that. However it seems results are consistant in that all the other sites in this space I watch all dropped about the same percentage. So when you do traffic comparison graphs they look somewhat similar to the old trends.