Alexa Finally Changes Ranking Engine

…and by that I mean it looks like they’ve actually BUILT a ranking engine to surpass the feeble Alexa Toolbar as the only measure of a site’s value.

I was one of, if not the first, to caution people when Alexa started that the rankings were based only on people who had the tool bar installed. These were predominantly webmasters. So sites that webmasters frequented fared well, like mine, in Alexa while others had terrible rankings. (The sites website owners weren’t likely to ever visit but the rest of the web was.)

This is why huge sites could have surprisingly low Alexa rankings and heavily niched sites, like mine, could have incredibly good rankings with far less actual traffic.

It appears Alexa is now using different sources for their rankings. My ranking went from the 30,000 range to the 60,000 range as a result.

But that’s probably fair and I welcome the change because, if it is universal, my 67,000 or so ranking is still going to be remarkable compared to the rest of the web. This is given that I have such a specialized site which doesn’t get a heck of a lot of visitors compared to, say, Digg.com.

Want to read up on the latest reports on the Alexa rankings change? Let me whip out my Utility Poster software and grab the best stories for you.

Alexa Ranking News from the Sphere…

Alexa Changes it Up

Alexa, the white elephant metric site that everybody loves to hate, announced today that they would be making a change to the way that their metrics are compiled. We listened to your suggestions, and we believe that our new rankings …

Alexa Changes Rankings Criteria Announcement

I guess it is fair though and I’m still happy with the change despite it negatively affecting my rankings. I’ve said before that Alexa rankings were useless to some extent due to the bias of people using the toolbar; now hopefully they …

Alexa changes their rankings

I went to Alexa to check the ranking and they have an announcement on their website that they did change the algorithm that calculates their rankings. I never dreamed of making it into the first 10K websites in the world and although …

Alexa changes website ranking system

Alexa will no longer measure data based on users of the Alexa toolbar, rather ranking sites based on aggregating data from various sources. Alexa announced the changes this past week, noting that many websites will notice significant …

Alexa changes ranking system - More sources than the toolbar

Alexa is the Web statistics tool that everyone checks but no-one really likes very much. Mainly because the stats were only compiled from people who installed the Alexa toolbar. But that’s all changed, and Alexa has now overhauled its …

Alexa Changes Ranking System

Because they only used the toolbar to determine a sites’ ranking, they have been highly criticized and many people have discounted the benefit and usefulness of Alexa saying that it is inaccurate. People have been asking Alexa to change …

Alexa Changes it’s Ranking System

Alexa announced that they have revised their ranking system. There are lots of negative comments about the previous algorithm of Alexa that is why, others are not trusting their algorithm. Will this changes , change the perception with …

Alexa changes website ranking system

Alexa announced the changes this past week, noting that many websites will notice significant changes in their rankings. Although the service has been popular with smaller sites, which don’t qualify for Nielsen rankings, critics have …

Alexa Ranking Changes - What effect will it have for Bloggers?

Please find below a summary of the changes AU refers to the Australian Alexa rank and X refers to the global Alex rank. While I have calculated the changes to last update’s top 100, I don’t want to post that until I’ve had a chance to …

Alexa Changes Rankings, Goes Beyond Dreaded Toolbar

The folks at Alexa have announced that their ever so popular (but, many might argue, often inaccurate) ranking system for web sites has been altered. The official word on the changes is slightly vague: Alexa claims “better rankings,” …

Tags: alexa, alexa rankings

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Today in SEO

A hand-picked selection of SEO related posts and news from around the web.

• Do I Really Need to Perform SEO for My Website?
• Eight Facts sbout SEO
• SES NY Session: B2B SEO Tactics
• Pretty Sites are Good for SEO
• New SEO questions & answers series
• SEO Tip: Almost 7 Ways To Re-Optimize Your Posts
• Beat SEO experts with a stick until they go away
• What Does SEO Have in Common With the Wizard of Oz?
• SMX West - Industrial Strength SEO - Amplify Overview
• SEO and Blog Post Titles

Tags: seo, seo tips

Google Changes Algorithm for Subdomains

Louis Liem reports on a change with the Google Algorithm. Google seems to have changed the way they are treating subdomains in the rankings.

The article appears at Bukiki.com and includes quotes from Matt Cutts on the changes and what webmasters should expect with regard to subdomain rankings.

It’s likely you’ve seen all the change you are going to see since they’ve already gone forward with it. And since subdomains are supposed to be vastly different information than the information on the main domain and other subdomains anyway, this won’t affect most people.

The change was a result of people complaining about getting several results for a single domain on some long tail searches.

Overall the change should not affect a normal site’s rankings in any meaningful way. On the other hand, there are surely some spam site operators out there that are worried if they are using subdomains to game the system precisely to show up with multiple listings for essentially the same content.

This should take care of those knuckle heads!

Tags: bukiki, directories or subdomains, google, matt cutts, subdomains

Top 5 Search Engine Marketing Trends in 2008

William Flaiz over at Search Engine Watch has a great post on search engine marketing trends for 2008.

Highlights:

“With 2008 in full swing, the game is already starting to change for the SEO (define) community. After the recent hailstorm of New Year’s predictions and resolutions, agencies and in-house SEOs are buzzing with new ideas and strategies for the next big search thing.”  -William Flaiz, SEW

I Love Validation! 

Did you really think reciprocal linking could be dead?  It’s not.  Not at all.   Chris Boggs backs me up and explains why claims of reciprocal linking’s demise were greatly and, I believe, intentionally exaggerated.

Tags: chris boggs, reciprocal linking, search engine marketing, search engine marketing trends, william flaiz

Subdomain or Folder - What does Google like better?

Search Engine Watch has a great link building post today on the difference between using folders/directories or subdomains and how Google views both in terms of rankings.

You are going to get an education in subdomains today, because oddly, Search Engine Round Table also did a piece on the topic with the same Matt Cutts info, but taking another angle on the issue.

It’s not really odd. These search engine sites are just doing their jobs. Matt Cutts talks about something and they report it. The New York Times and USA Today will have the same cover stories frequently as well.

It seems there’s no difference in using a directory to put, say, your blog versus a subdomain. There are definitely preferences among site owners, but in the end it’s about the links. A sort of “My directory can beat your subdomain any day of the week” kind of thing if you have enough link popularity.

Tags: search engine optimization, search engine roundtable, search engine watch, seo

Yahoo + Google = Yoople! User determined search rankings?

Not that Google is ever going to hand over the keys to the shop to users 100%, but they might learn something from new sites like this that allow users a say in the rankings.

read more | digg story

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Link Building News

Link building is going through some changes.  Here’s the latest news from the streets…

• “What’s a nice girl like you doing with links like that?” - Debra O. Mastaler writes some insightful link building tips in light of the recent Google pagerank updates and the obvious slapdowns of some very big, popular sites.  She writes about some social marketing stuff we have already discussed here as early as last summer, but her ideas on alternative traffic and linking sources are something to pay attention to in your marketing for sure.
• Aaron Wall’s latest in WebProNews - “Using Google Date Based Filters to Detect Link Building…”
• WebmasterWorld forum members discuss link building and the new rules of SEO.
• Link Analysis Beyond Search Rank - Eric Ward’s article helps with link analysis and valuing links beyond search engine optimization.

Building with Trackbacks

A link building tactic that is often overlooked is using PRWeb.com press release trackback feature.   I wrote a piece on this technique and it is worth a read if you are not periodically scanning PRWeb for trackback-worthy content.

The key is to start branching out and seeking new traffic venues with your link building campaign.   I have always said that one should never rely completely on search engine traffic.  With the recent (and constant) changes Google is implementing, this is more true today than ever before.

Tags: google, link building, pagerank, sem, seo

Pagerank Update Data from Andy Beard

Andy Beard has been tracking some interesting pagerank data on several popular sites. His findings are below. There seem to have been a few pagerank updates close together dealing blows to several sites and confusing pagerankings across different Google datacenters.

For what it’s worth, my blog went back to a PR 5 and my main domain is still at a PR 4. Hey, I’ll take whatever I can get. Traffic and rankings all remain the same for me across the board, so for me, PR going up a notch didn’t do a darn thing. Well, if I want to sell advertising, even with this post claiming no more traffic than before, I’d still get advertisers because of their PR lust.

I’d rather make much more selling my own products anyway. In case you think Google is evil, note that I found them slapping themselves by dropping YouTube.com down to a PR 3!

Here is what Andy found:

Domain	Starting PR	First PR Update	Second PR Update	Today’s PR
www.autoblog.com	6	6	4	4 or 6
www.engadget.com	7	7	5	5 or 7
www.problogger.net	6	6	4	6
www.copyblogger.com	6	6	4	6 or 7
www.joystiq.com	6	6	4	4 or 6
www.tuaw.com	6	6	4	4 or 6
www.searchengineguide.com	7	6	4	4 or 5
www.searchenginejournal.com	7	7	4	4 or 6
www.johnchow.com	6	5	4	4 or 5
www.quickonlinetips.com	6	6	3	3 or 5
www.seroundtable.com	7	7	4	4 or 6
weblogtoolscollection.com	6	6	4	4 or 6
andybeard.eu	5	4	3	3 4 or 5
www.blogherald.com	6	6	4	4 or 6
www.Forbes.com	7	7	5	4 5 or 6
www.sfgate.com	7	7	5	5 or 7
www.washingtonpost.com	7	7	5	5 or 7
www.technosailor.com	6	6	3	3 or 5
www.9rules.com	8	8	5	4 5 or 6
blog.nafurai.com	3	3	2	1 or 2
courtneytuttle.com	3	2	1	1 2 3 or 4
www.SunTimes.com	7	7	5	5 or 7
TheGadgetBlog.com	5	5	3	3 or 5
Space.com/	7	7	5	5 7 or 8
OneMansBlog.com	6	6	4	5 4 or 6
entrepreneurs-journey.com	6	5	3	3 or 5
The following are site updates which were not hit by a penalty previously for comparison purposes
www.hobo-web.co.uk	7	7	7	5
www.doshdosh.com	4	4	4	6
www.searchengineland.com	7	7	7	7
www.seomoz.org/blog	5	5	5	6
www.connectedinternet.co.uk	6	6	6	3 or 5
More news and updates available from source Andy Beard - Niche Marketing

Tags: andy beard, goog, google, google pagerank, pagerank update

Google Slaps Itself for Buying Links…

Google buys a high PR site, YouTube.com, and then the pagerank plummets to a 3. Some would say Google is being “not evil” and including themselves in their filtering system of weeding out link buyers.

It might be because I turned Google in for link buying in their Webmaster Tools area where they allow us to snitch on each other. Whatever the case may be, It shows even Google isn’t above its own filtering and sniffing system.

(snapshot taken 12:55 a.m. eastern, 10/28)

Just goes to show that even Google doesn’t care as much about Pagerank anymore, lol.

Tags: google slap, google slaps self, linking penalty, pagerank, youtube pagerank

Google SiteLinks

Google has a new program out to display “Sitelinks” under your domain. 

This gives a pretty hefty boost to your “above the fold” rankings.  As you can see above, I have almost all the rankings and links above the fold in my particular browser setup.  I run a lot of toolbars, so others might see a couple more rankings that aren’t mine, but owning the top real estate above the fold, or the majority, is a big deal.

Aaron Wall talks more in depth about Google Sitelinks and the implications for generic domain names to prosper with this Google development.

Tags: google site links, google sitelinks

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