If you are interested in Alexa you may have noticed that various web site rankings have changed – and some by quite a large margin.

Recently I wrote about Alexa (Alexa – traffic ranking) and wondered whether the toolbar data collection requirement really gave a relevant indication of web site reach (especially given the complications of some security software detecting it as suspect). It would seem that Alexa have been thinking something pretty similar and have announced changes to the way they rank traffic which takes into account more factors than toolbar use alone (of course the toolbar is still available). The official announcement is at The New Alexa Rankings where they say:

“…we’ve heard from our Alexa users that understanding Internet usage beyond Alexa Toolbar users was increasingly of interest.”

The changes have definitely had a positive impact on this blog as our ranking has jumped up quite considerably (up 115K places – take a look here on Alexa), for the time being at least as the current rankings are based on movements over the last nine months only and Alexa say that they “should have several years of data back on line shortly” which will no doubt shuffle the numbers around again.