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.

[Larwee]

I have long been amazed at how much attention some people pay to Alexa considering how wrong it is. I have also been amazed at how many people actually think Alexa is accurate and put a lot of significance in Alexa rankings.

The most amazing thing to me has always been that there are people who base their advertising rates on Alexa rankings and people who believe those rankings enough to buy advertising based on them.

A little time has passed since Alexa made their changes. Alexa still is far from being accurate and there are still people who have a lot of belief in Alexa rankings.

It looks as if a lot of blogs have seen their Alexa rankings take a big drop following the change. Bloggers have been trying to figure out the reason. Alexa isn't commenting on the theories.

One popular theory is that Alexa now ignores traffic that comes to sites from social media sites, social news sites and feed readers. A lot of sites that get a large amount of social media traffic have noticed drops in their Alexa rankings. But remember, this is just a theory some bloggers have as to what is causing their Alexa rankings to drop.

It is interesting to note that many of these sites would brag about their Alexa rankings when they were good. Now that they are seeing a drop, they are saying what a lot of people have been saying for years, and that is Alexa rankings aren't accurate.

[Linda Buquet]

Count me in as a blogger that used to brag, then had rankings tank and now thinks Alexa sucks.
You know Larry, we've talked about this.

I always used to have really good Alexa rankings and now they are just terrible.
I've always understood the various reasons Alexa isn't accurate,
but it still looks (and feels) better to be UP than DOWN!

[MikiciukPatryk]

I have alexa indicator on my toolbar but never look at it. Do any of you have alexa toolbar? I don't, none of my friends do so this ranking isn't too reliable.

[Linda Buquet]

I think mainly marketers still use the Alexa toolbar these days. That's probably part of the reason they started pulling in other types of data for the algo.

[joshnic2]

Alexa ranking cannot be trusted. I have several sites. But when I compare my real site with Alexa rank its totally different. Alexa shows decreasing traffic when I have traffic increase. The amount of traffic is misleading.

[Ron Killian]

Still waiting for them to be more accurate Lately they have been so far off from what I've seen.