Big Changes in the Alexa Algorithm

by Daniel Scocco

My Alexa rank was on the 200,000 range over the past weeks, and yesterday I noticed that my toolbar was showing 14,000 for it. I thought that it was a glitch, but today that 14,000 returned. I went to check out on the Alexa website, and here is a screenshot of the info I got there:

alexa change algorithm

So yeah, it looks like Alexa loves Daily Blog Tips again.

Jokes apart, I also went to check the Alexa rank of several Internet marketing related websites, and they all went up significantly. It probably means that Alexa changed its algorithm again.

If you don’t remember it, some months ago Alexa rolled out an algo change that supposedly weighted out the traffic coming from social media websites. As a result, many blogs and websites saw their rankings go downhill overnight. Daily Blog Tips, for instance, used to have an Alexa rank of 12,000 before that change, and it went to a ranking of 200,000 over the past six months.

Maybe Alexa realized that it messed up with the last update, and it is trying to fix things now.

Did your Alexa ranking chang a lot this week?

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37 Responses to “Big Changes in the Alexa Algorithm”

  1. Dingchao on April 3rd, 2009 11:15 am

    Mine goes a little down, but it’s quite normal. Congrats, Daily blog tips should goes up, why? Because I visit this site every single day!

  2. Hendry Lee on April 3rd, 2009 11:22 am

    It’s good to know that. It was pretty inaccurate for many sites. Instead of fixing it, they decide to open up more data.

    I hope by that approach, they are getting more serious about the ranking as well.

  3. RobbyAnz on April 3rd, 2009 11:29 am

    At this moment my Alexa ranking is very stable.
    On the Alexa’s site don’t appear to be present any type of algorithm change.
    Alexa present only a look change (cute!)…

  4. Pinaki Ghosh on April 3rd, 2009 11:41 am

    Yes, I notice it. Congrats! Especially the Alexa rank of popular blogs seem to have improved to a large extent. My main site writer4me had the rank of 88,000 last week; this week it is 89,000; not much change. But I noticed your blogs, and a few other popular blogs have hugely benefited from this change. Any idea why?

  5. Daniel Scocco on April 3rd, 2009 11:47 am

    @Pinaki, in reality the ranking of my and other IM related blogs has just returned to what it was before they rolled out the last algo change.

    I believe somehow they were not considering part of the traffic for that sites (social media traffic, for example).

  6. Rarst on April 3rd, 2009 12:37 pm

    I had fallen to something like 700-800К in last week.

    DBT is having a day of posts about services I couldn’t care less about. :)

  7. Daniel Scocco on April 3rd, 2009 12:44 pm

    @Rarst, at least those don’t happen that often :) .

  8. Nikhil on April 3rd, 2009 1:00 pm

    I am new one in the blogging but still my rank is improved by 800.000.

  9. Tia Singh aka @TiaSparkles on April 3rd, 2009 1:45 pm

    Well my blogsite is not even 2 months old and while the overall ranking is a bit better at 2.49 mil, I really noticed a change in the one month ranking it’s down to 1.29 mil.

    Not good enough! I’m actively working to bring it down to the low hundred thousands wonder how long that will take.

    Yay Alexa! I’m addicted to numbers!

  10. topcool on April 3rd, 2009 1:52 pm

    check alexa now

  11. LGR on April 3rd, 2009 2:05 pm

    They show some more information now as well that is interesting. Of course it still looks wildly inaccurate.

  12. ebta on April 3rd, 2009 2:22 pm

    My rank is stable, not much change (~32K) in the last 3 months..

  13. Dan Palka on April 3rd, 2009 2:29 pm

    Alexa has just gone berzerk on me the past few weeks.

    My most popular website (Info-Mac) dropped from the 400,000s to the 10 millions, then went back into the 600,000s within a matter of two weeks.

    My other, much smaller website with way less traffic (System 7 Today) is somehow in the 200,000s, is supposedly getting 99.9% of traffic from South Korea, and is the 3,399th most popular website in that country.

    This entire time, my Quantcast and Google Analytics reports have been stable.

    I’m now completely done with Alexa.

  14. Daisy the Curly Cat on April 3rd, 2009 3:36 pm

    I was finally below 100k and then with the previous change, I went WAY up and then finally stabilized around 200k. But in the last couple days, I went down to about 85k. Woohoo!

    I still wonder why my traffic graph has such wildly fluctuating spikes when my traffic is pretty consistent.

  15. Robin on April 3rd, 2009 4:00 pm

    My blog is still rather new so I haven’t broken into the top million yet…lol.

    I am loving the new Alexa. Although, my progress seems pretty much on the same track, I now have daily and weekly stats. This is ehlpful when trying to figure out how to progress further.

    It seems Google is working on PR now also. My “green” blog finally has a rank showing up, this only occurred over the past couple days.

  16. Che - Snugd on April 3rd, 2009 4:16 pm

    I think 14 000 is not reflecting the traffic of DBT.. its inaccurate…

  17. Random Girl on April 3rd, 2009 4:16 pm

    Congratulations on your new rank :) I’d expect you even lower soon with all those wordpress themes & blogger traffic

  18. Niche Blog on April 3rd, 2009 5:50 pm

    I don’t like the new look of alexa.

    On the ranking thing, My sites don’t seem to have changed much

  19. Mr. I on April 3rd, 2009 8:14 pm

    Finally, they are fixing it! But my ranking is still going up and up!

  20. Anish K.S on April 4th, 2009 2:02 am

    Alexa look and style also changed. for me alexa ranking is steady growing. :)

  21. Chris on April 4th, 2009 10:24 am

    My alexa rank also dropped significantly. I’m happy though

  22. Sarah Worsham on April 4th, 2009 3:55 pm

    Not that they’d ever admit it, but I wonder if they take Google PR into account in the Alexa rankings. It’s interesting to me that they both seemed to go up recently. Using Google PR as part of their algorithm would make sense and it’s a pretty readily available metric.

  23. Matt Oxley on April 4th, 2009 4:37 pm

    I noticed a huge difference on my site…i was averaging over 150k daily and now I have seen it go to around 50-75k Daily!!! big improvement.

    also hit a PR4 yesterday, not bad for a blog thats only been around since October eh?

    thanks for this article

  24. Shireishou on April 4th, 2009 8:05 pm

    It still change. my site always decrease even though the traffic is increase. T_T sad

  25. Ara on April 5th, 2009 7:57 am

    So the reason is alexa changed their algo. Honestly i do surprised when my blog A-rank increased by 500k n PR went from n/a to 4 in 30 days.

    Alexa solved, n awaiting the logic reason about PR in previous article :-D

  26. Rob O. on April 5th, 2009 11:11 am

    Whereas Google Page Rank does have some real-world significance, I maintain that Alexa is a self-perpetuating hoax – it’s only a valid metric because Alexa says so. And since so many gullible bloggers have bought into that notion, well then, it must be true.

    Alexa ranking is kinda like late-night infomercials hawking “collectible” Nascar plates – that is, what makes them “collectible” is that someone declared them to be so.

  27. Melvin Durable on April 5th, 2009 11:26 am

    You earned it. Further you will go.

    Melvin Durable
    melvindurable@gmail.com

  28. Pixel on April 5th, 2009 11:50 am

    My rank Still 17, 844 k.

  29. ZK@WebTrafficROI.com on April 5th, 2009 4:36 pm

    Now a days there is lots of problem in alexa. They are not able to show the ranking in numericals in their tool bar.

  30. ryan on April 6th, 2009 5:17 am

    my blog just go down and down

  31. pakdejack on April 8th, 2009 9:04 am

    there’s no significally change in my alexa rank.

  32. Boerne Search on April 9th, 2009 2:13 pm

    yeap, went up from 4.9 million spot to 220,000 spot. A hugh jump for me. But what does it mean???????????????

  33. heartburn solutions on April 11th, 2009 4:57 am

    I am not to focus on alexa rank or page rank …just getting traffic and money, enough for me

  34. siva on May 19th, 2009 1:50 pm

    this alexa is piece of shit, mine was in 20k, last year wen they chnaged their code, droped to 70k, me having double times users and around 90k page views daily,page views 2.5 greater than last year, still 70k,:( ,coz of this most advertisers not placing higher bids in ads,

    alexa .|. u

  35. Joe Scada on May 22nd, 2009 7:00 pm

    Nice info very usefull, thanks.

  36. medyum on July 6th, 2009 7:56 pm

    So the reason is alexa changed their algo. Honestly i do surprised when my blog A-rank increased by 500k n PR went from n/a to 4 in 30 days.

  37. ravi on October 2nd, 2009 3:37 pm

    Yes, I notice it. Congrats! Especially the Alexa rank of popular blogs seem to have improved to a large extent. My main site writer4me had the rank of 88,000 last week; this week it is 89,000; not much change. But I noticed your blogs, and a few other popular blogs have hugely benefited from this change. Any idea why?

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