家里的台式机上装了个alexa工具条，今天偶然发现blog的排名出现了大幅度的上升，于是进去看了下，发现alexa的排名算法做了比较大的修改。原来alexa的排名的主要数据来源是alexa工具条，这个东西，除了一些个人站长或者专门帮别人刷排名的，估计安装的不多，所以得到的数据的准确度是值得怀疑的。想想以前国内多少网站靠着这个排名作为拉到风险投资的救命稻草，原来不过是建在沙滩上的城堡而已。每一次alexa排名算法的变化，都是有人欢喜有人叫，呵呵。
现在还拿alexa说事的应该不多了，web2.0们都喜欢说自己有多少注册用户有多少用户生成的内容了，没了关注度的alexa做出了最大的一个改变，不再过于依赖工具条的数据了。从一开始知道alexa，就对他们依赖工具条的数据来做排名就觉得很疑惑，他们居然说In recent months才收到用户的抱怨，借口而已吧，真正的原因，是一直无法获得足够的数据呢？还是一直写不出算法？
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. We generated the rankings through an analysis of Internet usage by people who use the Alexa Toolbar. Since that time we’ve been delighted to see that the Alexa Rankings have become a yardstick by which website popularity is measured. We are grateful to the thousands of people who come to Alexa.com each day to check the Alexa Rankings.
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!
We listened to your suggestions, and we believe that our new rankings system is much closer to what you asked for. We now aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users.
看来一切东西都可存在假货