Alexa have announced it has overhauled its ranking system. You can see their announcement here via TechCrunch.
They have ditched their toolbar as the sole source of their rankings and are now pulling in data from other sources too. This means that the skew towards tech sites (as their readers are more likely to use the toolbar) has been addressed (or at least they’ve tried to address it).
Those who check their rankings regularly will now see new rankings. For some there will be little change where as others will see increases or decreases.
For example my other blog Digital Photography School now shows up on Alexa with a very similar ranking to ProBlogger. Previously it was much much lower despite having higher daily traffic numbers. It’s still not perfect (DPS ranks at 16561 (i’m not sure it used to be but it was in the 20,000s) and ProBlogger 12917 (previously in the 3000’s despite DPS having more actual traffic) but it’s at least closer.
PS: Amit has tracked how the changes have impacted the rankings of some blogs.
I believe Alexa has finally understood that its ranking system, although which was a sort of industry standard, was not quite authentic because it was dependent on its toolbar users.
Hence this change is certainly a change in the positive direction and will make the Alexa rankings more reliable.
Now I see why my site ranking did not change 4 days agao. I hope this new ranking algorithm cannot be manipulated.
This is something they should have been doing in the first place. Half of the systems that webmasters have to deal with are the attempts of monopolies companies like alexa and google create. If you use adsense be careful what other ads you use-if people don’t deal with the alexa toolbar , your rank is not reflected well-and so on.
I guess if I had the monopoly to dictate actions and rewards for the internet community I would do the same so we just shrug our shoulders and try to program and set up our sites for good whatevers. Bring on the new stuff alexa and lets try to adapt and code our sites in accord to whats best.
Hmm, should be interesting to see if they have finally improved their relevancy. I haven’t worried about Alexa rankings in a long time… then again, I’ve not had good enough numbers to worry about.
I just post my opinions about that too. Many bloggers I know, including myself, were using StumbleUpOn to generate traffic to boost the Alexa Traffic Ranking for any reasons.
Now the changes could meant that StumbleUpOn is no longer a good source to manipulate Alexa Traffic ranking.
Here is my opinions. Will new Alexa Traffic Ranking System kill StumbleUpOn?
This should shakeup the Top 100 Australian Blogs Index somewhat
My main blog has had its rank improve considerably to easily get inside the 100,000 rank and my travel sites rank has moved out to 200,000
Still not perfect but getting better
Hey that’s good for Alexa, lets see what this new algorithm will bring. a lot of people think it will affect their rankings which it most like will and is already, simply because before they were dependant on their toolbar. I wonder what other sources they’re using now…
Interesting…bummer, it still indicated I’m a small fry! Do I get points for not feeling like a small fry these day? I guess not. I’ve never fully understood the Alexa rankings and how they translate to new business. I understand advertisers use it as a tool to gauge a blog’s popularity, but beyond the top 100k I’m not sure how useful those figures are. I guess this might be an opportunity for me to dive in and learn more.
Yes, it changed, but nothing serious for me coz my blog is brand new at the moment, but seems alexa rankings of many famous blogs drunk a lot! But I will still love problogger!
Frankly i never clearly understand how alexa used to rank there sites. Google page rank understanding is much better. Hope the algorithm reflects the ranking much better this time around.
Many sites uses alexa ranking as a tool to display their popularity. Some of them might now see a shift in the rankings. Also as rightly said by darren, tech sites are most ikely to be affected.
By the way, congrats darren for the jump in the rankings of DP School site.
My Blog got a boost of 10k straight compared to what was last night.( i got 32xxx now) I know from my traffic sources that kind of people land up on my site are not geeky. They are very regular people who look around tips on computer usage or anything similar to that. Good news for me anyway
Good move from Alexa as many people started to realise that the Alexa ranking was something that could too easily be manipulated. I like how they sugarcoated that in the article…
Too bad Alexa is not revealing from what other sources they’re pulling their data from.
I saw my site take a good drop down 100k from yesterday. Barely left behind my main competitor and miles away from others. About time proper rankings came!!
When i first saw the changes, i was not sure what happen with alexa and made a post on the drastic changes made to all..
http://www.etienneteo.com/2008/04/alexa-just-threw-bomb-on-every-site.html
I guess the announcement was out after a while i made the post. I will be using compete for now.
It’s good news for me. Sciencbease.com finally got back into the top 100,000 after a hiatus troling around the 130k mark for the last few months. It’s also good to know that the system is now a more accurate public indication of traffic and presumably just got harder to game.
db
I do believe that alexa is finally giving the ranking data fairly enough as was before the data was inspired by the alexa toolbar as declared by alexa
it’s a pain though for me being a new kid in the block.. my site has been online for 3 days.. and the alexa rank is really high.. for those who didn’t know that alexa rankings has changed already.. that could create a bad impression on me.. LOL.
It’s all good for me. I’m really curious though as to what their other sources of data are.
Anyone who has a clue?
Your post certainly offers encouragement to new bloggers who all too often are given the perception that it is next to impossible to acquire a ranking from any of the name brand search engines like Alexa and Google.
Thanks for the update.
I never understood what alexa meant anyway. I checked mine and found out it even increased in rank.
Wow…
My BlackBerry blog RIMarkable jumped up over 30,000 places moving from around 87,000 or so up to 53,685.
I knew that I had much more traffic than what they Alexa gave credit for so I am glad that they are using more than just one data point to gauge traffic.
This is HUGE. And, a long time coming, too.
I am really happy to see that my blog
http://abapprogramming.blogspot.com alexa rank improved my all most 200000 all of a sudden and it is at 300K right now.
My Alexa rating has improved dramtically. It was about 6,000,000 now it’s hovering at 4,000,000. I always thought the tool bar was a bad idea, and I’m glad to see they are making improvements.
Yea, I am so happy to see Alexa evolving! My ranking dropped from 192k to 132k. This is going to change the whole advertising worth of many sites.
Unfortunately, the ones who CARE about their Alexa rank are probably the ones who will feel this hit the hardest.
Anyone know what the REAL reason behind the switch in collecting data? Is this a reaction to pressure from Compete.com?
Hope Alexa has simplified itself than before. I’d found it quite complex and tried to join but simply couldn’t because of not so friendly interface and hard to understand too.
I dont realy mind since my site is still new anyway. got no ranking at alexa yet. its like now the game of hiking alexa ranking just start all over again
But tech sites have a higher proportion of Firefox users, which don’t normally have Alexa installed, so they’ll be undercounted in theory. In practice, I don’t know. My Alexa ranking jumped by a third, even though my stats say that 40% of my visitors use Firefox.
Alexa is pretty worthless as a tracker of site ranking. My visitor count has doubled over the past six months, as measured by three different methods, while Alexa shows me flat or slightly down.
I kinda forgot about Alexa because I don’t blog about tech topics, I’ll have to check out the changes now, thanks!
My ranking dropped considerably, from 80k to 230k…. =(
My blogs have increased Alexa Rank, maybe it is impact of changes on their ranking system
So I suppose that would explain why I went from about 70,000 to over 200,000. Insanity! But I guess my site did have an advantage because of its niche, and it’s a lot more fair now. Even though it didn’t help ME out too much, kudos to Alexa. This made all bloggers in all niches having a fighting chance.
I was wondering what sparked the change in my ratings. I had one stay the same, one go up and the other go from 6M to less than 3M without much change in traffic. This explains a lot thanks for posting it.
This should help even out the distribution between sites in my Utah Innovative Company Index. I tracked over 50 sites last month and now 100 more. This index will change a lot next month, hu?
Although I think Alexa is still pretty inaccurate compared to hard stats, like page views and unique views, but the new system seems to be a little bit more accurate.
I’m back in the top 100,000! Thats a +40,000 jump for me.
All our blogs have gained from the recent changes. Coool!
Even though everybody knew that Alexa’s rankings were innacurate, webmasters and bloggers were still relying on the system to compare their site with competitors.
The new improved system will certainly make Alexa a lot more popular than it is already.
Although rankings and stats are important I didn’t find one which is really perfect. I check alexa now too for my rankings!
My MMORPG blog LagORama got a nice boost of about 120k in my Alexa ranking as a result of the change…from 340k to 219k at the moment. That’s a bit more in line with my expectations, to be honest.
And when you consider that “MMORPG” is about as “techie” as you can get niche-wise, it’s interesting that it improved with the ranking algorithm change.
difeerent sites ahs a different effect on their alexa rankings.
check out my review.
http://wahb.biz/2008/04/18/alexa-new-ranking-system-got-a-different-effect-on-websites/
The funniest part of their long overdue admission of guilt in having a flawed ranking system was this part of the Q&A:
My site’s ranking has changed. Was it wrong before?
Your ranking wasn’t wrong before, but it was different.
Oh, I get it. DIFFERENT. Reminds me of Forrest Gump:
“Remember what I told you, Alexa. You’re no different than anybody else is. Did you hear what I said, Alexa? You’re the same as everybody else. You are no different.”
And Philip Morris, which I detail in analogy form here: Alexa Finally Admits They Sucked
I’m new to blogging. My rank has moved up by 300K in this week slightly slower with my previous weeks movements of 1000K.
Any idea what other sources they are looking to apart from this toolbar?
After the new changes, i now begining to check my alexa posted here http://www.davcheong.com/earning-guide/keep-track-of-my-alexa-now.htm which also mean, i am not sure whether i should track it.
My blog is less than a year old and was around 500k range and has climbed to around 320k pretty big climb.
Its about blinking time I’d say. With this new change, it will surely make Alexa more relevant once again.
Well this update has been great for me…I went from 120K to 81K , I used the see the blogs with less traffic used to have higher alexa ranking by using entrecards.com
now faking is all over…thanks to alexa for this ranking system..
Its good for all of us that Alexa Ranking system is improved, more reliable and consistant now.
And here I thought I had just done something really right the last three or four days. Oh well, as long as I rank higher, who cares why!
My eco blog and web site rank was 1.23 million and dropped to 1.83 million… Oh well, just three months ago it was at 14 million on alexa… so I am pleased with the progress so far…!