Most directory owners will now be aware of the changes that Alexa claim to have changed their methods for ranking but does anyone really think they can’t still be abused? I’ve never held any credibility with them, they are to me about as useful as a car with square wheels.

So how could they improve their rankings? They certainly haven’t let on what they’ve done so its all guesswork from here. They claim to be able to get a broader picture of who visits your site now, but how can they do that if the surfer doesn’t use their widget in their toolbar? I may be wrong but from the way I see it the only people who use Alexa are directory owners, a few SEO companies, (most reputable SEO’s stay a mile away from it because of its inherent unreliability).

In my time I’ve probably looked at well over a million websites covering a massive range of topics from pets to porn (for the right reasons of course). I’ve never once seen Alexa on these pages and doubt very much if the owner of a site such as Pets.com could be bothered to install what has for all intent and purpose seen to be nothing short of spyware? Even to this day many anti-virus and anti-spyware softwares detect Alexa as spyware or greyware and delete any files that they could use to track your behaviour which they need to be able to collate their statistics.

Alexa claim that it isn’t spyware, and if I’m honest I have to agree that in the broader context it isn’t. As they say in their explanation, spyware is hidden, Alexa isn’t, its a piece of software that hooks into your browser bar, and is done consciously by the computer user. But this is where I’m now lost on how they can improve? Because Alexa is still relying on the fact that it can only measure traffic from a computer who has the toolbar installed then its still as inherently flawed as its ever been. The same people are going to use it aren’t they? or do Alexa know something that we don’t?

They certainly aren’t giving anything away on their ‘Announcement’, in fact they’ve been positively coy about it. Sure they’ve spoke about how they have changed the layout of charts etc, but they haven’t gone even a baby step into explaining how they can possibly improve on the way they monitor traffic?

Alexa claim “..In recent months we’ve heard from our Alexa users that understanding Internet usage beyond Alexa Toolbar users was increasingly of interest. Ask and you shall receive!..” But again, who are these users? From my experience its the people I’ve already mentioned above, the ‘directory owner’ type web masters, some seo companies, and perhaps even newcomers who are Naive enough to think Alexa counts for something. But if that’s the case then they aren’t going to improve the traffic, they are just going to change the way its displayed?

Surely the only way to improve their results is if they somehow appeal to a greater generalized audience as opposed to the niche area of toolbar users they currently have now? “When Alexa began displaying rankings in 1998 it was with the goal of showing Alexa Toolbar users how popular any given site was within the Alexa community….” Until they change that ‘community‘ they aren’t ever going to improve the true rankings, all they are going to do is to perhaps improve on how they display these results.