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Blogging Guide > Specials > Site Statistics > Alexa ranking has completely changed
I don't make a habit of reporting the news, instead preferring to suggest tips that will be of benefit to you in the long-term. But I'm very interested in statistics and this is a major change, so I wanted to mention it as soon as possible.
The Alexa Ranking system has been changed. Have a read of my general guide to online statistics to see what it was like before.
So it seems like Alexa is no longer relying solely on users of their toolbar. I'm not sure what other statistics they're looking at, but to be fair, if people knew what affects their ranking - they could manipulate it more easily. I heard about people who suggested installing the Alexa toolbar and getting their readers to do the same, just to boost their Alexa rank. Why not spend more time writing great content?
Every now and again I will check my traffic rank and compare it to other sites. To do this, view the history graph for my site and look at the five boxes just above the graph. My site should be in the first box. Put another site in the second box and click "Compare Sites". You'll now see a traffic comparison.
As I said, I don't know what stats they use now, but I tried comparing my site to a couple of others and found that my site is better off than it was before. bloggernoob.com is a site I read regularly but he always seemed to do better than me on Alexa. Now though, our stats are very similar. More surprisingly is johncow.com, which has had a similar rank for the last couple of months according to the new calculations.
The comparisons are just a bit of fun really. If I'm writing great content, people add comments and submit posts to StumbleUpon, and they subscribe. Those are the main things I look at when considering how my site is doing. But I welcome this change, even if my traffic rank has gone down. Anything that makes statistics more useful is worth doing in my opinion.
What do you think of the changes?
Alexa ranking has completely changed
< A beginner's guide to Google Analytics, part 4 - Traffic sources and Content | Site Statistics |
This is a subscribers-only post. Thank you for subscribing!I don't make a habit of reporting the news, instead preferring to suggest tips that will be of benefit to you in the long-term. But I'm very interested in statistics and this is a major change, so I wanted to mention it as soon as possible.
The Alexa Ranking system has been changed. Have a read of my general guide to online statistics to see what it was like before.
So it seems like Alexa is no longer relying solely on users of their toolbar. I'm not sure what other statistics they're looking at, but to be fair, if people knew what affects their ranking - they could manipulate it more easily. I heard about people who suggested installing the Alexa toolbar and getting their readers to do the same, just to boost their Alexa rank. Why not spend more time writing great content?
Every now and again I will check my traffic rank and compare it to other sites. To do this, view the history graph for my site and look at the five boxes just above the graph. My site should be in the first box. Put another site in the second box and click "Compare Sites". You'll now see a traffic comparison.
As I said, I don't know what stats they use now, but I tried comparing my site to a couple of others and found that my site is better off than it was before. bloggernoob.com is a site I read regularly but he always seemed to do better than me on Alexa. Now though, our stats are very similar. More surprisingly is johncow.com, which has had a similar rank for the last couple of months according to the new calculations.
The comparisons are just a bit of fun really. If I'm writing great content, people add comments and submit posts to StumbleUpon, and they subscribe. Those are the main things I look at when considering how my site is doing. But I welcome this change, even if my traffic rank has gone down. Anything that makes statistics more useful is worth doing in my opinion.
What do you think of the changes?
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Comments on Alexa ranking has completely changed
Thanks for commenting, Meg. :) I'm with you on this - making the stats more relevant makes them more valuable. Now it really means something.
If it makes the rankings more accurate, I'm all for the changes. The tech skew has been something that has frustrated me (even though I was on the receiving end :D ).
Like you, my ranking dropped (around 28k), but at the end of the day, it's our internal stats which holds much more relevance.