Last week Alexa announced they’ve rolled out a new ranking system. Largely viewed as a blunt tool, Alexa was still widely used in the late 90’s and early 00’s as it was one of the few ways to gauge the relative popularity of web sites for which there was no insight into their usage data. Alexa currently faces new challenges as companies like Compete and Quantcast are offering far more information.
Of course, the problem with Alexa, Compete and Quantcast is the quality of the data being used. Alexa states they’ve upped the number of data sources being used to shape their rankings, changed the methodology to provide more accurate reporting for all countries, and updated their algorithms to provide an “even better indication of website popularity.”
