Alexa new ranking change, Google on the move?

Most of the bloggers track the so called Page Rank, which is Google’s measure of web page authority. The greater this number is - the more authority the page has. The more authority the page has, the more likely it is to show up in the search results for a term contained on that page.

However this is not a complete information about a site, as it does not count visits to the site.

Much usable measure would be the ranking of actual website traffic which is exactly what Alexa rank was providing. It shows the traffic stats for a given website, and a rough comparison of that site’s traffic to any other site on the Internet.

Alexa is gathering information from people who installed the Alexa toolbar or an equivalent plugin for Firefox browser. The toolbar is then sending information about your surfing to Alexa. Based on that information, Alexa created a ranking system that ranked the sites from number 1 (being the most visited site in the world) to millions. The first three places are “reserved” for sites like Yahoo, Google and Youtube while yours or my site can be anywhere.

Alexa changes rankings

Last week this site was ranked around 70,000 which means it was among 70,000 most visited sites on the Internet. However this was very biased. Only people having the Alexa toolbar contributed the vote, and that would be the kind of people with mostly technical and IT related skills. That meant that sites about daily news, fashion or cars would not be ranked appropriately. Since the content of this blog is such that it attracts visits from people who are more likely to have alexa installed, the ranking of the blog was higher then realistic.

This week Alexa introduced new algorithm. Not only the algorithm was changed but according to Alexa, they now gather information from other sources as well. My site now moved to ranking around 150,000 which is probably more accurate description of it’s popularity then it was previously. A number of IT related blog fell down significantly while some political blogs leaped forwards.

Why is ranking important

While obviously you can get feedback about where you site ranks compared to others, it is also a very good measure of how does your business stand in comparison to your competitor’s. Imagine that in real world you could have the information about the number of people entering your competitor’s store or corporate building.

Rankings are like a view in the crystal ball

This is a very valuable information for Internet marketeers and Alexa was the only one providing useful data which just became more useful with the latest update. But there is no competition for their service, meaning the data may still not be accurate enough or even manipulated.

What about Google

What I am wondering is this. Google has been offering their own toolbar for a lot of time now, probably five or six years. Google is also shipping Firefox with Google toolbar installed in their referral program which millions of sites use to generate income.

That means that potentially Google has much more information on website rankings then Alexa can ever hope to have.

Is Google planning to release their own equivalent of Alexa ranking? That would secure them number one position for Internet Marketing research purposes (they already have Page Rank). I think they are and that we can expect this in near future.