Now being in the Alexa top 100,000 actually means something!
For more or less 8 years (well 10 for one of them) there have been only two across the board methods of measuring the importance and popularity of a website : Alexa Ranking and Google PageRank. Both methods are flawed.
Sure, others have entered the fold, with Yahoo Backlinks, Compete.com and even SEOmoz PageStrength entering the fold (although PageStrength is dependent upon the others); but even given their weaknesses, no other web metrics have added up to the authority given to Alexa and Google (Toolbar) PageRank.
With web traffic and popularty measurement startups like Compete.com and Quantcast breathing down Alexa’s neck, the Amazon.com owned company has finally taken steps to rework their ranking system and broaden the monitoring of website traffic outside of the Internet marketer and webmaster influenced toolbar market (more or less, only site owners knowingly download Alexa so they can monitor or influence their own Alexa stats).
Alexa is now going Beyond the Toolbar for rankings gathered from Numerous Sources.
Today Alexa announced that they have launched a new Alexa Rankings system which offers :
- More Sources : Alexa rankings are now based on more sources of data to give a better indicator of website popularity.
- Better Rankings : Rankings are now a better indicator of site popularity due to new and improved algorithms.
- Improved Methodology : Alexa aims to provide consistently accurate rankings for all countries.
From Alexa:
When Alexa began displaying rankings in 1998 it was with the goal of showing Alexa Toolbar users how popular any given site was within the Alexa community. We generated the rankings through an analysis of Internet usage by people who use the Alexa Toolbar. Since that time we’ve been delighted to see that the Alexa Rankings have become a yardstick by which website popularity is measured. We are grateful to the thousands of people who come to Alexa.com each day to check the Alexa Rankings.
In recent months we’ve heard from our Alexa users that understanding Internet usage beyond Alexa Toolbar users was increasingly of interest. Ask and you shall receive!
We listened to your suggestions, and we believe that our new rankings system is much closer to what you asked for. We now aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users.
Have you noticed a change in your Alexa Rank? We’ve dropped down to the 30,000 level while other top search marketing blogs have also followed this course. This should be an indicator that Alexa is working better.
I’d like to also know the other sources Alexa is working with. My assumption is other toolbar companies like Ask.com, Conduit or maybe even ISP’s for tracking this information. There are also many desktop widget companies and browser extensions which monitor surfing behavior. And since Alexa is an Amazon.com property, which Amazon.com or IMDB.com tools is Alexa using to measure web surfing?
Please feel free to share your thoughts.
