New Alexa Ranking Algorithm - Considering the Non Alexa ToolBar Users!
Posted on 4/19/2008 by Rani Dababneh
As I was waiting to check my new alexa ranking at that day, I got shocked by the news of Alexa changing their ranking algorithm, I was expecting a good change but it was some kind of disappointment for me!
1 month ago and at the 2 months birthday of my site, I was glad to achieve a 6 Digits Alexa Traffic Ranking (Below 1 Million in less than 2 months), and the achievement was still on in the last month, going down and down till I got 502.000 total alexa rank, and around 250.000 week alexa rank for 4 to 5 weeks, so I was surely hoping to see a number like 400 thousand, but i got shocked of my new rank.
All of that was a result of the new alexa ranking algorithm, as they are announcing now they are considering much factors, rather than the main old factor which was based on the alexa community (only those who use the alexa toolbar).
The thing i can't get, isn't alexa community a fixed percentage of the whole web community? then how come this percentage trend is wrong to use as indicator of the whole web community visitors trend? it's a tool not a business or trend! I mean, for example if we took 100 IE users and 100 FireFox users, we may find that 20% of IE users are visiting facebook and also 20% of FireFox users are also visiting the same site. same applies on alexa toolbar, 100 alexa bar users will have 20 visiting facebook, while we will also have 20 facebook visitors of 100 Non-alexa toolbar users. so the business trend is the factor not the tool used to reach this business.
The question I am asking now, if what I previously assumed is wrong, then how can alexa decide what sites do those Non-alexa toolbar users visit? and how accurate can it be?
1 month ago and at the 2 months birthday of my site, I was glad to achieve a 6 Digits Alexa Traffic Ranking (Below 1 Million in less than 2 months), and the achievement was still on in the last month, going down and down till I got 502.000 total alexa rank, and around 250.000 week alexa rank for 4 to 5 weeks, so I was surely hoping to see a number like 400 thousand, but i got shocked of my new rank.
All of that was a result of the new alexa ranking algorithm, as they are announcing now they are considering much factors, rather than the main old factor which was based on the alexa community (only those who use the alexa toolbar).
The thing i can't get, isn't alexa community a fixed percentage of the whole web community? then how come this percentage trend is wrong to use as indicator of the whole web community visitors trend? it's a tool not a business or trend! I mean, for example if we took 100 IE users and 100 FireFox users, we may find that 20% of IE users are visiting facebook and also 20% of FireFox users are also visiting the same site. same applies on alexa toolbar, 100 alexa bar users will have 20 visiting facebook, while we will also have 20 facebook visitors of 100 Non-alexa toolbar users. so the business trend is the factor not the tool used to reach this business.
The question I am asking now, if what I previously assumed is wrong, then how can alexa decide what sites do those Non-alexa toolbar users visit? and how accurate can it be?
New Alexa Rating
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15 Response to "New Alexa Ranking Algorithm - Considering the Non Alexa ToolBar Users!"
there is a general consensus amongst the experts, that alexa is flawed, specifically when it comes to blogs.
i would stick with technorati, which until now, has proven to be a more accurate reflection of the general blogosphere. specifically by authority.
My web site: Sacramento Wedding DJs, showed a HUGE increase in its Alexa ranking (a jump of nearly 1,000,000), when the score went from 1,890,000 to 985,000....there are not many Toolbar users visiting my site, mostly non-geeks (LOL). New Alexa algorithm is a reflection of many other factors besides Toolbar data, and it will be interesting to find out WHAT they are using, to further optimize rankings & site traffic.
oh thats a huge positive change for u.. congrats :) so alexa toolbar users are geeks ha? lol :) .. n ya i really wish to know what are the new factors!
Ok, my site was at ranking 8,000 aprox, after the alexa ranking change now it is 70,000+.
If the current rankings are better and we see my site example we can conclude that my old site ranking were completly useless since there was a 10x arror.
If we were trusting this information with this enormous error, what makes us trust the company now?
The only thing they have achieve with the new ranking is make evident the enourmours error margin they have (as you can see in my site example).
So if they were so wrong before how can we trust them now?
OMG now thats a huge negative change :S
my change margin was from 500 to 900 thousand!!!
Fernando ur right man.. those are huge numbers we are talkin here and a huge error margin!!! now exactly, i guess the trust rank is changed too!!!
Alexa has always said that rankings above 100,000 are meaningless.
My site went from appx 68,000 to appx 49,000. As those figures are both under 100,000, the change probably reflects the reality of their algorithm - and it makes sense.
In the past Alexa was heavily skewed toward bloggers and blogging sites. Now apparently it is not..
mmm so some people went down n some went up, we all agree it was a big change but i dont think anyone is sure yet which algorithm is more accurate!
Hopefully it will be more kind to me than the last algorithm.
hopefully :)
I'm still figuring out how it all work out?!
My ranking went up so I'm not complaining! :P
lol good for u :)
Alexa.com is a subsidiary of Amazon.com. It is a website which provides information on traffic levels for websites. The Alexa rank is measured according to the amount of users who’ve visited a website with the Alexa toolbar installed. Alexa toolbar is an application developed by Alexa Internet. Its primary use is to measure website statistics. This toolbar collects as well as gives some valuable information. Once you install it, the Alexa toolbar monitors all your surfing and collects information about what domains you visit. They use this data to rank web sites. The traffic rank they assign to websites is based on 3 months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of other users and is a combined measure of page views and users. Webmasters, advertisers and ad networks use your blog’s Alexa rank as a gauge to determine the worth of a link on your website. If you depend on link or site selling as a form of monetization you’ll definitely want to increase your Alexa rank, because it’ll increase your bargaining power when it comes to ad pricing.
thanks for the info, but now it's all changed, its not based on Alexa Tool Bar users only!
well according to that comment about alexa ranks over 100,000 being meaningless i guess i can only look forward to positive increases then, since i'm at 9 million now i can only move up, eh?
Samui Villas and Homes
Why do some people seem to place such a huge emphasis on alexa. Honestly who really cares what alexa thinks of any given site? It is not going to help you rank better in the search engines. THe only reason I can see alexa as being useful is if you wanted to sell your site. Even then the info from analytics would be more beneficial.
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