Alexa changed - it’s a whole new ballgame
Just a day after my post about the various ways to check your comparative rankings, Alexa goes and totally changes the way they calculate how they determine rankings. What a coincidence.
Like a lot of you, I have the Alexa toolbar installed in my browser (firefox) and today I noticed something - all of the sudden, my rank fell through the floor! What’s going on? Like a dad that forgot his kids at the store I headed over to Alexa in less time than it takes to blink my eyes to investigate. Initially, I thought they must be having database issues, after all, my rank couldn’t of dropped so much in one day. Could it? Apparently, it can. And did.
Ouch.
When I first checked the Alexa site there was nothing there about the change. I somehow went from a three month average of 131,817 to 216,974 without any indication as to why (my weekly average was just above 50k and is now at 262,994 - even higher than my three month average. What?!?) I just kept hitting my
refresh button, and hopped the next time the page reloaded my rank would be back. Then, there it was. The little banner you see on the right. I was initially in shock. Dumbfounded. Just scratching my head.
So, what’s this all mean?
I’m not really sure. After reading their announcement, things have been clarified only slightly. The lack of available info is a bit disappointing. According to the announcement they now include sources of information outside of the browsing stats of the Alexa toolbar users. What other sources is a mystery to me. There’s no specific information on the Alexa website or the Alexa blog.
I’ve written the Alexa staff in hopes of having some of the specifics demystified. When (if) they write back I’ll do a follow up post and will hopefully be able to clarify how their new system works. In the meantime, take my Alexa poll and let the world know how you feel about this unexpected change.
Click here to take the Alexa poll
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10 responses so far ↓
1 John Sullivan // Apr 16, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Man dude your on top of it.I spent some time today doing a few things that I picked up on here,came back a lil while later and your Alexa changed alot.Hey I’m going to see how fast I can bring one from 2.5 mil to a million.Anyway like always your on top of what’s going down.
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Ty Hurd reply on April 16, 2008:
Thanks John. You’ll get to a mil in no time for sure. Just keep doin what you’re doin’!
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2 Fool // Apr 16, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Oh my things they are a changing! Thanks for the post.
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3 ameo // Apr 16, 2008 at 7:32 pm
yup i noticed that earlier ,
but i stopped caring about alexa 3 days ago
[Reply]
4 Justin // Apr 16, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Thanks for the post Ty, I am glad I am not the only one. I went from around 240K to 330K today out of no where. My one week avg was just 89K like 2 hours ago, and now its around 452K!
It sucks when things change and you do not even get any information on how or why.
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5 Life on Mars // Apr 17, 2008 at 3:43 am
Mine from 340k to 320k, nothing different …
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6 Mother’s Got A Dot Com » Blog Archive » Minding My Own Business // Apr 17, 2008 at 4:25 am
[...] but couldn’t find anything to explain the new system. It turns out I’m not alone. This article from TysBlog says all the things I wanted to say on the matter - Ty even promises a follow-up, as he’s [...]
7 John Sullivan // Apr 17, 2008 at 8:28 am
Dont mean to double dip my bad but this is hot,hmm I sign up for a site http://milliondollarblogs.ning.com/ and I quess since Alexa is the big topic I saw right off the bat that my “portal” is #566 right off the bat and there’s backlinks already all set up So guys pls go thru me and get you one for free,yeah you may of heard of ning.com before But I’m going to use that site for ALOT of stuff Good luck let me know how you make out.I still can’t keep up to Ty yet
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8 Jason // Apr 18, 2008 at 11:06 am
Yeh mine went back up also. From like 1mil to 2 mil. And I though I was doing good for the new site being only 2 weeks old till this change.
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9 TysBlog.com April progress report | TysBlog.com // May 5, 2008 at 12:36 pm
[...] Alexa ranking dropped a fair amount in April but I attribute that to the Alexa Change last month. As I reported in this post, Alexa changed their ranking algorithms and doubled the [...]
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