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April 16, 2008

Alexa Overhauls Ranking System

Duncan Riley

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alexa.jpgEveryone’s favorite web statistics whipping boy Alexa has announced a major overhaul of how it compiles traffic figures.

The biggest change is Alexa’s decision to drop exclusive reliance on the Alexa toolbar for traffic data, with Alexa now aggregating data from “multiple sources” to compile its statistics and web rankings. As part of the move, historical data from Alexa is no longer available, with data now only going back 9 months (we presume calculated using the new methodology).

Alexa is spinning the decision as a step forward without admitting to previous flaws:

Your ranking wasn’t wrong before, but it was different. Alexa toolbar users’ interests and surfing habits could differ from those of the general population in a number of ways, and we described some of those possible differences on our website. While the vast majority of sites’ rankings were unaffected by such differences, we’ve worked hard on our new ranking system to adjust for situations in which they could matter. The new rankings should better reflect the interests and surfing habits of the broader population of Web users.

A search of tech blogs saw many with significant drops in rank, where as political sites have had big boosts. For example TechCrunch and the Drudge Report were tracking similar figures on Alexa prior to the change, where as now the Drudge Report is a mile out in front.

Although regularly derided in the past for its often bizarre results (like YouTube having more traffic that Google), Alexa has continued to maintain popularity due to its broad global reach and completely free service provision. Time will tell if Alexa has done enough to appease its strong and vocal critics.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 6:03 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. R.L.

    April 16th, 2008 at 6:08 pm

    I was noticing today on my SearchStatus bar the wild Alexa change, thanks for the heads up!

  2. bob cobb

    April 16th, 2008 at 6:08 pm

    Wow, I went from around 150k to around 85k :shock:

  3. Trisha

    April 16th, 2008 at 6:09 pm

    O.o this would imply that more techie people use Yahoo, and more political people use Google, if you think about it.

    Somehow that just doesn’t make sense…

  4. Jay Smooth

    April 16th, 2008 at 6:10 pm

    “Your ranking wasn’t wrong before, but it was different.”

    Wow.. these guys are ready to run for president.

  5. Sean

    April 16th, 2008 at 6:20 pm

    I noticed this today and just thought it was a bug. Clicky’s ranking dropped from ~7000 down to ~32000.

    Oh well, I say fuck Alexa anyways, it’s horribly inaccurate. It has shown Clicky’s traffic as basically plateaued over the last 6 months, when in fact it has more than doubled during that time.

  6. Will Johnson

    April 16th, 2008 at 6:29 pm

    Seems like a smart move to avoid being completely plowed under by Compete.

  7. Thomas

    April 16th, 2008 at 6:30 pm

    I still prefer Compete.com…. in fact, I bet this “change” was in hopes of catching up with Compete and Quantcast.

  8. CARversation.com

    April 16th, 2008 at 6:33 pm

    About time, their rankings were way off before.

  9. bflora

    April 16th, 2008 at 6:36 pm

    Mike, good catch on the political blog boost. My News + Current Affairs Magazine just jumped 70,000 spots!

  10. * Miss Universe

    April 16th, 2008 at 6:37 pm

    The rise of companies like Compete.com probably had a lot to do with them being forced to see their strong bias towards hi profile Tech websites

  11. Ted Rheingold

    April 16th, 2008 at 7:02 pm

    Yeah, great. So what?

    Why do they still use statistics of per million humans. Who talks likes that. What advertisers ask you your reach per million or page serves per million.

    Alexa rank means nothing, so why make that the only data point you can take away. They need to really move into the 21st Century. Or throw in the towel if glatial change is their only pace. I almost never make negative comments here, but Alexa, you deserve it.

  12. Pierre

    April 16th, 2008 at 7:08 pm

    Let’s see…Alexa ranking system:

    1) Reach per million out of unknown no. of millions of users —-> I don’t care
    2) Rank out of unknown no. of websites ——> I don’t care
    3) Pageviews per million out of unknown no. of millions of users ——> I don’t care

    Why won’t they rank websites the way data analysis tools and compete and quantcast do, which is by monthly uniques (that actually mean something)? Alexa is on it’s way out of people’s hearts and minds, fast.

  13. Samir

    April 16th, 2008 at 7:11 pm

    I still really like compete.com. but this is an interesting move, I’m curious about if it helps bring back users that used to use alexa and moved to other services. I doubt they’ll be able to overcome the already set mantra that “Alexa ranking means nothing”

  14. Martin Murphy

    April 16th, 2008 at 7:14 pm

    So, what is alexa’s new alexa ranking?

  15. Dan...

    April 16th, 2008 at 7:20 pm

    long overdue…competitors like GOOG/Urchin and IZEARanks provide data from the inside out (more accurate), rather than outside looking in (estimation/sampling errors)…so what are people seeing for their new #s vs actuals?

  16. J.P.

    April 16th, 2008 at 7:21 pm

    A comparison between 5 sites, that I happen to know the real stats, shows that this is worst than before.

  17. Winston

    April 16th, 2008 at 7:26 pm

    we’ll this is a good move for alexa. the results they give before is less reliable, or not at all.

  18. rodel

    April 16th, 2008 at 7:28 pm

    now i know why.. im traffic rank went down.. tsk tsk tsk.. it would surely affect ad revenue this time.

  19. Scabr

    April 16th, 2008 at 8:03 pm

    New Alexa ranking pulls down Twitter from about 500 to 1,970

  20. Pavel

    April 16th, 2008 at 8:15 pm

    Even the fact our ranks has dropped from 5k to 8k does not make me mad when I see that Alexa data is now much more accurate then before.
    Finally the countries traffic numbers are way to closer to the real information we have from Google Analytics.

    And even better fact is I see more realistic “side-to-side” stat numbers for our competitors. I’ve checked several of them who has shared with me their real Google Analytics numbers and now Alexa gives me pretty close (still not 100% of course) details as well.

  21. Search The Tail

    April 16th, 2008 at 8:53 pm

    South Korea is now in the top 4 countries that the most users of our search engine are from! It ranks 12K. Other tools tell us it is in the bottom 100.

  22. YouYap.com

    April 16th, 2008 at 8:57 pm

    My website ranking went up. Not sure how it happen but looks good.
    YouYap.com

  23. dhiraj rawat

    April 16th, 2008 at 9:56 pm

    my website ranking has improved but it is not showing graph…http://www.trademart.in/

  24. gaurav

    April 16th, 2008 at 10:00 pm

    my first holiday my holiday guide and package site has good traffic but it is not showing traffic graph why? can u tell me plzzzzzzzzz…..

  25. Search The Tail

    April 16th, 2008 at 10:09 pm

    @gaurav & dhiraj rawat
    Graph is available only for sites ranked in the Top 100K.

  26. James Schramko

    April 16th, 2008 at 10:49 pm

    A great improvement for data. I guess people like compete.com will be pushing alexa to be more accurate. We can now track non-internet marketing markets better.

  27. Mystery CEO

    April 16th, 2008 at 10:53 pm

    Interesting - I’m assuming they’re not revealing where that other data is coming from ;)

  28. David J.

    April 16th, 2008 at 11:04 pm

    Lots of folks in the comments are talking about Compete, but check out Quantcast. They have the superior solution — tracking stats at the source… the publisher’s site… and the site makes available as much or as little as they want to, but it’s 100% sampling (which is not sampling at all, of course) and their solve really can’t be gamed to the high side.

    Doesn’t Compete only show US stats? Only 21% of the Internet is in the US (according to comScore), so someone with a global solve that is also the superior solve will win. People are figuring out that that is Quantcast.

    This craziness from Alexa helps to marginalize Alexa data and embolden the cry for a real solution that is also free — Quantcast!

    And, no, I don’t work for Quantcast, I just have checked out all the options very carefully as one of the largest sites in the world…

  29. Emily

    April 16th, 2008 at 11:38 pm

    Why is everyone such a fan of Compete? My experience is that Alexa reflects the traffic trends on my site much more accurately. Compete has never seemed to correlate particularly well, while Alexa has generally risen/fallen along with google analytics. The relative height/depth of the of the peak hasn’t always been right on, but over time it has definitely been the most accurate of these services, as well as the most timely.

    I also don’t see any value in showing unique visitor numbers that have almost no bearing on reality: Compete monthly uniques for our site have generally been much smaller than our DAILY average, and seem to be similarly ridiculous for other sites in our category.

  30. Life on Mars

    April 16th, 2008 at 11:43 pm

    Just find alexa has changed a lot, Dosh!

  31. Jon de la Vega

    April 17th, 2008 at 12:32 am

    My site got yesterday to the top 1000 (It had a 936 rank) and today is down to 13273. It’s funny because yesterday I added the site to the Rails Top 100 list ( http://rails100.pbwiki.com/ ) and it was supossed to be the 3rd page in alexa coded with ruby on rails.

  32. Sudoku Maniac

    April 17th, 2008 at 12:32 am

    I am tracking my Online Sudoku Solver site ( http://www.sudoku-solver.net/ ) with Alexa. It says my pageviews have gone up by 56% in the past 3 mos ( I guess it means 3 months). Actually my page views have gone up by more than 500% in the last 3 months.

  33. A. Naser

    April 17th, 2008 at 12:35 am

    Alexa now aggregating data from “multiple sources”

    Anyone have an idea what are these “multiple sources”?

  34. AbdulBasit Makrani

    April 17th, 2008 at 12:36 am

    I woke up today morning and normally checked Alexa traffic ranking which I usually checks every morning and was shocked to see that from 49k it’s now changed to 26k!

    I am very happy with the recent change in their algorithm

  35. heddy

    April 17th, 2008 at 1:16 am

    Alexa is great for *rough* overall worldwide comparisons of sites. But they don’t tell you their sample size (# of toolbar users, country distribution, etc) and they don’t tell you their new ’sources’.

    Compete looks nice but only tracks US users from a small number of ISPs, and won’t give you an idea of their sample size.

    Quantcase do the same as Compete for the vast majority of sites but some sites (’quantified’) embed Google Analytics-style tracking pixels in each page and provide all the info. Such as:
    http://quantcast.com/answers.com
    When they do that, it’s all good. But for most other sites, it’s just the same as Compete.

  36. sean

    April 17th, 2008 at 1:26 am

    i haven’t used alexa for quite a long time…

  37. Stefan

    April 17th, 2008 at 2:43 am

    First step in the right direction - better late, than never!

    However, still a lot of question go unanswered, e.g.:

    - What are these new sources?
    - Will analysis of non-.com-Sites improve?
    - Or will it still be focussed on the US?

    Folks: Ever thought about involving the community out here when it comes to improving the site?

  38. duvet-dayz

    April 17th, 2008 at 2:45 am

    This look much like work in progress.

    We checked a few web sites and besides that their ranking has dropped substantially there are now also whole countries missing (e.g. USA) with at least one site we checked.

    In the past we have, for example, seen that some topics (odd / humor) that went up high or to the front page of Digg.com / Del.icio.us etc were massively over-counted while for example more technical topics that went to the front page of social bookmarking sites - while the same traffic occurred - were only counted around 10% of their actual size. I believe that says something on the composition of their sample. And some leading Desktop security products identify their applet as spyware anyway.

    We have audited / externally measured traffic numbers taken directly at our servers and those have continuously differed from Alexa like night and day.

    Having been so inaccurate in the past we have just stopped to take any notice of Alexa’s numbers. But we still see them handed around with some advertising (e.g. AdBrite) or other services but believe this is mainly because of the availability as a web service.

    Given that since a year or two others provide much more accurate traffic and usage figures to a broader audience, Alexa must have been loosing massive ground with their client base lately. That might have triggered the change towards taking more appropriate approaches to measure traffic to web sites.

    Maybe Alexa will improve now but it will take a long time to overcome their reputation destroyed in the past.

  39. jeff

    April 17th, 2008 at 3:01 am

    yes nice to see …my Blog has moved from 116,000 to 87000..kudos to Alaxa!!

  40. Wes Mahler

    April 17th, 2008 at 3:06 am

    We’re up, we digg it :)

  41. Max

    April 17th, 2008 at 5:32 am

    @heddy - Just to clarify, Compete actually aggregates data from a number of different sources, not just ISPs. We’re also pretty upfront about the size of our panel (2 million US consumers).

    Glad to see sites ours forcing Alexa to improve. I just wish they we’re being so black box about the “multiple sources” they are adding in.

  42. beopenordie

    April 17th, 2008 at 6:20 am

    can everyone please go get quantified , if your not then it looks like your either not in the loop or have something to hide. compete.com is a hoax and a joke.

    get quantified! quantcast.com

  43. Vero Pepperrell

    April 17th, 2008 at 6:25 am

    Have people ever taken Alexa seriously, and what benefit has it ever had other than the “mine’s bigger than yours” comparison?

    *Shakes head*

  44. Jim

    April 17th, 2008 at 7:06 am

    I agree that Compete is useless, Alexa somewhat better, but only Quantcast is really good (for sites that use their tracker). I think the future of this is Quantcast or another tracking-pixel based service.

  45. Mark

    April 17th, 2008 at 8:00 am

    my site was pushed bak from 4.9K to 17K :( so sad

  46. Carl

    April 17th, 2008 at 10:39 am

    Funnily enough in reference to poster #44, I found quantcast to be more than useless, actually wildly inaccurate, alexa a little better, and Compete much better.

    This Alexa change took one of my sites from ranking c. 250,000 to c. 75,000 today. Quite a difference!

  47. Marc

    April 17th, 2008 at 11:35 am

    well its about time they got with the times

    compete.com uses multiple sources to generate numbers, so just by that fact alone they are better than alexa.

    in addition, compete.com provides that information in useful ways, like reports, much better charting and browser addons.

    i could actually go into way further detail….

  48. Josh

    April 17th, 2008 at 4:55 pm

    It is best that Alexa is changing its ranking system. It is about time! The system was easily manipulated before and was not precise. At least now webmasters can look to Alexa for reference on traffic.

    Josh
    http://www.abigarcade.com

  49. Josh

    April 17th, 2008 at 4:56 pm

    It is best that Alexa is changing its ranking system. It is about time! The system was easily manipulated before and was not precise. At least now webmasters can look to Alexa for reference on traffic.

  50. Trond Erik Jacobsen

    April 18th, 2008 at 6:55 am

    Hmm…

    This probaly make my little project worse to complete, as I need to include alot more sources for marketing the site to get in the top rankings.
    My idea was to get a website amoung the top 100 alexa ranked websites within 365 days. http://www.alexa100in365days.com. I`ve had a website rank 800 in alexa before, so I had a good feeling about the project before Alexa changed their system.

    Trond Erik
    http://www.Alexa100in365days.com

  51. Sportsrapp

    April 18th, 2008 at 5:37 pm

    Sports websites saw huge jumps in alexa rank. I figure if you do good work and pull decent traffic, your numbers should be reflected fairly on which ever service you prefer.

  52. Ashish

    April 22nd, 2008 at 3:17 am

    This is a good news as they will now consider more sources of traffic and not only reports depending on alexa toolbar.

    Traffic details will be now more accurate and real.

  53. Dennis

    April 25th, 2008 at 8:07 am

    Heard that Alexa added results from dmoz.org to their algorithm.

  54. alexa widgets redirection

    May 1st, 2008 at 3:19 am

    I heared the announcement that alexa has changed its ranking algorithm. I am little happy with this change because my website got little improvment. see new alexa ranking for http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....ehotels.in Fortune Park Hotels Ltd.

  55. Gireesh Sharma

    May 1st, 2008 at 4:23 am

    Even my website’s ranking dropped, though by couple of thousands only.

    http://www.empxtrack.com

    Strangely, we are seeing a consistent increase in the number of unique visitors through Statcounter.com, the changes in Alexa ranking are slightly dis-aligned.

    Wondering, how to make our visitors install Alexa Tool bar!!!

    Gireesh

  56. ASIF IQBAL

    May 1st, 2008 at 8:23 pm

    Change is not easily welcome but it’s always for good!

    We should talk about which are other sources where Alexa is taking data.

    Is it Ranking.com?
    Is it Dmoz.org?
    Is it Google’s PR?
    Is it StatBrain.com?

    Plz share your thoughts here

    ASIF IQBAL

  57. alexa ranking widgets

    May 14th, 2008 at 5:25 am

    I heared the announcement that alexa has changed its ranking algorithm. I am little happy with this change because my website got little improvment. see new alexa ranking for http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....ehotels.in Fortune Park Hotels Ltd.

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