…and by that I mean it looks like they’ve actually BUILT a ranking engine to surpass the feeble Alexa Toolbar as the only measure of a site’s value.
I was one of, if not the first, to caution people when Alexa started that the rankings were based only on people who had the tool bar installed. These were predominantly webmasters. So sites that webmasters frequented fared well, like mine, in Alexa while others had terrible rankings. (The sites website owners weren’t likely to ever visit but the rest of the web was.)
This is why huge sites could have surprisingly low Alexa rankings and heavily niched sites, like mine, could have incredibly good rankings with far less actual traffic.
It appears Alexa is now using different sources for their rankings. My ranking went from the 30,000 range to the 60,000 range as a result.
But that’s probably fair and I welcome the change because, if it is universal, my 67,000 or so ranking is still going to be remarkable compared to the rest of the web. This is given that I have such a specialized site which doesn’t get a heck of a lot of visitors compared to, say, Digg.com.
Want to read up on the latest reports on the Alexa rankings change? Let me whip out my Utility Poster software and grab the best stories for you. 
Alexa Ranking News from the Sphere…
Alexa, the white elephant metric site that everybody loves to hate, announced today that they would be making a change to the way that their metrics are compiled. We listened to your suggestions, and we believe that our new rankings …
Alexa Changes Rankings Criteria Announcement
I guess it is fair though and I’m still happy with the change despite it negatively affecting my rankings. I’ve said before that Alexa rankings were useless to some extent due to the bias of people using the toolbar; now hopefully they …
I went to Alexa to check the ranking and they have an announcement on their website that they did change the algorithm that calculates their rankings. I never dreamed of making it into the first 10K websites in the world and although …
Alexa changes website ranking system
Alexa will no longer measure data based on users of the Alexa toolbar, rather ranking sites based on aggregating data from various sources. Alexa announced the changes this past week, noting that many websites will notice significant …
Alexa changes ranking system – More sources than the toolbar
Alexa is the Web statistics tool that everyone checks but no-one really likes very much. Mainly because the stats were only compiled from people who installed the Alexa toolbar. But that’s all changed, and Alexa has now overhauled its …
Because they only used the toolbar to determine a sites’ ranking, they have been highly criticized and many people have discounted the benefit and usefulness of Alexa saying that it is inaccurate. People have been asking Alexa to change …
Alexa Changes it’s Ranking System
Alexa announced that they have revised their ranking system. There are lots of negative comments about the previous algorithm of Alexa that is why, others are not trusting their algorithm. Will this changes , change the perception with …
Alexa changes website ranking system
Alexa announced the changes this past week, noting that many websites will notice significant changes in their rankings. Although the service has been popular with smaller sites, which don’t qualify for Nielsen rankings, critics have …
Alexa Ranking Changes – What effect will it have for Bloggers?
Please find below a summary of the changes AU refers to the Australian Alexa rank and X refers to the global Alex rank. While I have calculated the changes to last update’s top 100, I don’t want to post that until I’ve had a chance to …
Alexa Changes Rankings, Goes Beyond Dreaded Toolbar
The folks at Alexa have announced that their ever so popular (but, many might argue, often inaccurate) ranking system for web sites has been altered. The official word on the changes is slightly vague: Alexa claims “better rankings,” …
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Thanks for the link! I found that my rankings improved a bit. On the order of about 20k upward in fact. Doesn’t make much difference, but it’s always nice to see a good metric…
thatedeguy’s last blog post..Adsense Deluxe, Wordpress 2.5 and MySQL 5.0
Thanks for the link ..:)
Dexter’s last blog post..WordPress 2.5.1 is out
Yeah I’ll take good news even with questionable data any day! It sucks to get bad news with questions yet to be answered about how they are doing the rankings now though, lol.
Wow! Mine just drop to 200k, Anyway thanks for the update. Need lots of work to do.
Ivonson’s last blog post..Using Autoresponders Responsibly
Ok…what about us Blogger bloggers?
Utility Poster for us? Are we the orphans out here?
c’mon, Jack, show us some love too!
Jim DeSantis’s last blog post..Hillary Clinton Bosnia Caught on Tape
some of my sites saw a large drop (for the better) in rankings.
of course, the best one is still 120k, so I’ve yet to break the 100k barrier.
Have you check and see the google update. Mine gone from PR1 to PR3
I’m happy after 10months of work
ivonson’s last blog post..Using Autoresponders Responsibly
I think that is good, now the ranking is more precise! Which is good for every ranking at all
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Does Alexa rank play any part in Google rankings? if not what is the point of it?
Does Alexa rank play any part in Google rankings? if not what is the point of it?