Alexa Updates Its Web Rankings - Still Not Good Enough
Amazon-owned Alexa has announced a major update to its 10 year old web ranking system. Previously, Alexa's rankings were based solely on data collected from the downloadable Alexa Toolbar, but now the company is aggregating data from multiple sources. That's good news, but it may be too little, too late for a company whose rankings have faded in relevance in recent years.
Alexa launched its web site rankings in 1998 based on data from its toolbar software. In the late 90s and early part of this decade, Alexa was more or less the only place people could turn for public ranking data on the web at large, and so their rankings -- though often times inaccurate -- were widely quoted. At the time, unless you wanted to pay for data from firms like Nielsen, comScore, or HitWise, it was Alexa or nothing. Alexa rank became a metric that people actually paid attention to and took seriously.
But in recent years, that has changed. Alexa now faces competition from Compete, which launched a similar public service in 2006 (our coverage), and from Quantcast, which was founded in 2005. Both of those companies gather data from numerous outside sources and their rankings are generally seen as more accurate than Alexa's.
"In recent months we've heard from our Alexa users that understanding Internet usage beyond Alexa Toolbar users was increasingly of interest," wrote Alexa in the announcement of their rankings overhaul. Recent months? The inaccuracy of the toolbar-based rankings has been discussed for years, which is why we think this might be too little, too late for Alexa.
Beyond the problem of public perception, Alexa also still displays their data in non-standard ways. The hard-to-understand pageviews per million, reach per million, and rank are not easily compared to other data sources, which makes Alexa's information less useful than it could be, even if it is presumably now more accurate.
Historical data on Alexa is currently only available for the past 9 months while the company recalculates old data with its new ranking algorithm.
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ya that's good to see some improvement their
because i found some websites has a rank below 1 lac but they don't deserve that much rank
second i found serveral loop holes in the old rankingalgorithm like my one friend said use social n/w websites to get higher ranking in alexa but this new algo will sole this issue
actaully i read the complete stroy on the alexa website.and now here .
Posted by: Ajay Pathak | April 16, 2008 9:24 PM
Wow, great post and great information. Thanks!
Posted by: sikantis | April 16, 2008 9:25 PM
Quantcast asks us to put a script which I dont have any problem with but again they ask to put an image which links to them. This is what I don't understand.
If you want to measure traffic script should be enough like Google Analytics script.
Posted by: Ashish Mohta | April 16, 2008 10:48 PM
Alexa still has good name recognition out there. If Amazon focuses on something, they can usually do it pretty well. They have some great assets, and like Google & Apple, they may start to line them up for maximum impact.
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Posted by: Buddy Scalera | April 17, 2008 12:39 AM
Finally, though as you mention it might just be a little late by now.
Posted by: Media Strategy | April 17, 2008 1:34 AM
thanks for the information :)
Posted by: technology hacker | April 17, 2008 2:21 AM
thanks for the information :)
Posted by: technology hacker | April 17, 2008 2:22 AM
thanks for the information
Posted by: technology hacker | April 17, 2008 2:24 AM
I agreed, Alexa measurement of web traffic is simply inaccurate, and changing of the ways it is using now is simply too late..
Posted by: Singapore Web Hosting | April 17, 2008 3:07 AM
Alexa measurement is inaccurate, but the closer you come to the 100,000 mark the more accurate it is.This is what I read on the Alexa website.
Posted by: Tom | April 17, 2008 3:22 AM
Their improved algorithm makes some site rank decreasing.
Posted by: Hans | April 17, 2008 8:52 PM
thanx to the revamp my site jumped up 60%
Posted by: bollyarm | April 18, 2008 1:47 AM
Alexa is well over rated on traffic results.
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Posted by: Brian | April 18, 2008 2:42 AM
It was time for a change.
Posted by: Alex B. | April 19, 2008 3:56 PM
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/details/main?url=www.fortunehotels.in Fortune Park Hotels Ltd.
Posted by: alexa ranking | April 30, 2008 5:35 AM