Web information company Alexa, an Amazon company, announced that a new ranking system is available. Alexa has ranked websites since 1998 and that time has managed to endear itself to millions of website owners and operators and simultaneously raise the ire of the same number. Rankings were based on analysis of Internet usage by people using the Alexa toolbar which any savvy online marketer can tell you, could easily be manipulated in the past. Today, website owners are seeing their rankings shift and the fun will continue for the next couple weeks. While the announcement was pretty vague on what has actually changed might again make Alexa a competitor in the face of competition from solutions like Compete.com, Quantcast.com and other Web ranking services.

An improved methodology will normalize traffic from a global panel and provide more accurate rankings for all countries, and while not dumping the toolbar data outright, Alexa rankings will now be based on more sources of data to give better indication of website popularity. Pretty big news in the website ranking business.

Does this system-wide improvement make Alexa a more viable solution?
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