Alexa Updates Traffic Rank Algorithm
Over the last 24 hours Alexa has updated it’s ranking algorithm in a move to make traffic stats more accurate, they have also reduced the date range to a maximum of 9 months.
The official Alexa announcement states that “Your ranking wasn’t wrong before, but it was different.”, there’s a few people who will probably disagree with this but the new rankings do appear to be a big improvement. This now takes into account that users viewing a technical website are more likely to have installed the Alexa toolbar. For example SEOmoz, used to have a top 1000 Alexa traffic rank, while this is clearly a hugely popular website in the search industry the new rank of 9,197 is far more reflective of where the site stands in terms of traffic over the whole internet.
Other SEO websites seem to have seen similar drops, SEOptimise going from 55,000 down to 142,648, while I’ve noticed client websites with high levels of traffic and previously low Alexa ranks now take large jumps. The actual traffic levels are obviously still the same but now Alexa may have more credibility in terms of trusting a websites estimated traffic.
This change has worked well for me, across all of my sites. A lot of Entrecard people get slapped, but I think many bloggers have had their numbers inflated with this system and similar schemes.
Comment by Matt Keegan — April 18, 2008 @ 9:37 pm
Although SEOptimise has seen a drop in Alexa rank I have to agree that on the whole it’s a good thing. We did use our Alexa rank to promote ourselves, but it was very difficult to explain why we had an Alexa ahead of some very big brands. All that did was devalue Alexa as a comparison tool. Now I hope we can quote Alexa ranks without having to qualify them.
Comment by Stuart Tofts — April 18, 2008 @ 10:07 pm
I believe it will take a while before the actual results will come out. Certainly, the Alexa rankings needed some improvements.
Comment by Mike Standing — April 28, 2008 @ 1:45 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/details/main?url=www.fortunehotels.in Fortune Park Hotels Ltd.
Comment by alexa widgets of ranking — April 30, 2008 @ 12:31 pm
My website went up minimally, however, now it is on a steady downward change, even though the number of alexa users has gone up, and the number of overall users has gone up. WTF?
http://www.vapropertiesinc.com
Comment by Chris @ Va Properties — June 19, 2008 @ 3:44 pm