What's up with Alexa ranking spikes?
What’s up with Alexa ranking spikes?
If you’re into the web and a stats junkie, that probably means that you’re over at Alexa at least several times a day checking out ranking trends. Everyone knows that Alexa rankings (which are based on sort of a Nielsen-like system of extrapolating overall rankings based on the web activities of those browsers which have the Alexa toolbar installed) need to be taken with big heaping grains of salt. And everyone loves to quote Alexa stats and talk endlessly about them anyway (including me)!
Now, I’ve noticed that many sites over the last few days have seen a spike in ranking. Has anyone else noticed this? I did a quick search on Google News and Technorati and saw no reporting about it.
My guess is that some large scale algorithmic adjustment has taken place. That, or a bunch of sites have seen their relative rank increase sharply all within a short period of time, but the former theory makes more sense to me.
Consider:
CNN
Fark
Mahalo
TechCrunch
Techmeme
I pulled the above sites from the top of my head (what that says about me, I’m not sure!).
By the way, here’s an article with a ton of tips on how to increase your site’s Alexa ranking.
