RSS
Email
SMS
Alexa Changes its Rating Methodology
(Rate this article)
Loading ...Email It!
It’s funny, I just mentioned Alexa in a post on Myspace launching in India (today) and while browsing through TechCrunch, i found out that Alexa has overhauled its ranking methodology.
Alexa no longer relies exclusively on the Alexa Toolbar for traffic data. It is now aggregating data from “multiple sources”. As part of the move, historical data from Alexa is no longer available, with data now only going back 9 months
A welcome step for obvious reasons – it makes the data more reliable. So it’s a win – win for Alexa and its consumers. A lot of people in Indian Web 2.0 I have spoken to scorn at Alexa. Primarily because it almost used to function like TRP’s (a small representative sample that is not really ‘representative’ and a closed process of calculation).
Im not sure if they will still reveal too much about their process of calculation but one thing is for sure – the sample will no doubt be more representative now.
Here is what Alexa said without giving too much importance to previous flaws:
“Your ranking wasn’t wrong before, but it was different. Alexa toolbar users’ interests and surfing habits could differ from those of the general population in a number of ways, and we described some of those possible differences on our website. While the vast majority of sites’ rankings were unaffected by such differences, we’ve worked hard on our new ranking system to adjust for situations in which they could matter. The new rankings should better reflect the interests and surfing habits of the broader population of Web users.”
Just as a piece of trivia which I picked up from TechCrunch – Alexa has previously shown bizarre results such as YouTube having more traffic than Google.
Nevertheless a free service coupled with global reach and positive brand associations has ensured that Alexa gets repeat viewership. Such a move should only strengthen their brand proposition.
Loading ...
As per me, Alexa is total wastage of time.. you can read my article titled अलेक्सा को लेकर अब ज्यादा मत चौंकिये @ http://prashant7aug.blogspot.com/2008/03/blog-post_04.html
I wonder, if they could have migrated to the new method through a weighted average system. Show ranking as a combination of the old and new technique and slowly add more weight-age to the new method.
That wouldn’t really help would it. Its not like there are changes in the front end or the UI (or barely). consumers care about the front end. they tend to blindly trust the backend so i doubt what you are proposing would have made a difference to Alexa’s consumers.