We're Back

Though we had a brief glitch that prevented us from displaying Traffic Rank numbers for some sites, the error has been corrected. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Please Stand By...

Thank you to all of you who have been writing today about some missing rank data on our site. We are working to get the missing information out to you as soon as possible.

Please note that all of the data that you are seeing on our site right now, with the sole exception of sites ranked as “no data”, is not affected by this issue.

Stay tuned. We expect all of the data to be released later today.

Facebook Overtakes Myspace

Mark it on your calendar - April 19, 2008 - the date that Facebook overtook Myspace as the #1 social networking site on the Web.


This has been a long time coming. Facebook has been steadily increasing reach while Myspace has been treading water. Over the course of the last 8 months facebook has seen its unique visitors double, growing its reach from 4% in September of last year to 8% today... an impressive achievement by any measure.

As of this writing, Facebook is ranked as the 5th most popular site on the web, just ahead of Myspace at #6. This puts Facebook ahead of Internet heavyweights such as Wikipedia (#8) and MSN.com (#7).

Can facebook move up farther in the rankings to #4? Not anytime soon. The site currently in that position is live.com, which has more than twice the number of visitors. But who knows, at this growth rate, facebook may not be done scaling the Alexa rankings.

Good Golly, it's MOLI

Is the graph to the left an indication of another social networking site crossing a threshold? The newish site MOLI just hit my radar as I was watching some graphs of recent Mover sites that aren't overnight spikes followed by a return to their former levels. This one has been on a steady climb for at least a few weeks.

I've seen enough of these things come along over time to recognize the initial pattern: social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace seem to toil in relative obscurity for a while, expanding from the people who work there and their families and friends to a larger audience with time. Then, something happens: a critical mass of those who are in the know sign on and they grow quickly. I wonder if that's what is happening with MOLI.

I am not big on social networking sites personally. I think that between my accounts on Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, I have just enough connections to seem like a hermit. When YouTube came out with the tag-line "Broadcast yourself," I thought, "Well, whatever for?" I have a professional interest in these sites, but tend to prefer not to publish the quotidian, my quotidian. When the stories started coming out a couple of years ago about people leaving college and missing out on job opportunities because they were a bit to free with their personal details on such sites, I was comforted by my obscurity.

It seems MOLI might be a step in the right direction for those addicted to sharing personal details. Because the site allows you to manage multiple profiles using one account, the folks from the church social never have to know about the party animals you know--who in turn won't have any idea how boring your job is. However, because I can just see me posting my award-winning tuna casserole recipe to my social profile in a moment of reply-to-all oblivion, I think I just might stick with my journals.

Does MOLI have a niche?

The Alexa Ranking system has been changed

The New Alexa Rankings

We've been working hard behind the scenes for several months and are excited to announce that our new Alexa Rankings system is available.

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.

You gave us many other suggestions as well, and we are working hard to implement them. We won't tell any secrets just yet, but you can expect to see new features rolled out over the coming weeks and months.

Below are a few common questions we anticipate from the Alexa community, along with our answers.

My site's ranking has changed. Was it wrong before?

Your ranking wasn't wrong before, but it was different. Alexa toolbar users' interests and surfing habits could differ from those of the general population in a number of ways, and we described some of those possible differences on our website. While the vast majority of sites' rankings were unaffected by such differences, we've worked hard on our new ranking system to adjust for situations in which they could matter.

The new rankings should better reflect the interests and surfing habits of the broader population of Web users.

Why are the long range graphs gone? I can only get 9 months of historical data.

We are recalculating historic traffic data and will continue to add it over the coming weeks. We apologize for the inconvenience, but should have several years of data back on line shortly.

Will you change the rankings again?

We are constantly working to ensure that we provide the most useful data that we can. We will continue to fine tune our algorithms but don't foresee any additional big changes. If you think something is amiss please let us know.

I liked the old rankings better. Are they still available somewhere?

We liked the old rankings as well. However, we developed the new system in response to the huge number of requests we got from users like you, and now that it's done we like it even better. We hope you will too.

We think that having more than one ranking system at a time would be confusing, so we have removed the old rankings.

Do you want to know what I think about this?

Definitely. We've been collecting suggestions and ideas for months now, and would love to hear more. If you have thoughts on what we've done so far, or ideas on what we should do next, please share them with us.

Feedback is welcome.

The Power of YouTube

I was looking at the most recent batch of Movers and Shakers today, and I noticed a site among the top three that is not in any way affiliated with March Madness. Once it caught my attention, I felt like digging in to see what was going on.

The site is Avaaz.org and they're into global social justice issues, organizing online, that sort of thing. They have an international staff of campaigners, so they have a decent Traffic Rank. But while they usually are in the fifty thousands, the past week they've been going below ten thousand. Why the bump? Did they purchase ads on coffee sleeves or run a commercial during a college basketball game recently?

No. They entered a contest on YouTube and won an award for best video in the political category. On the page where their video "Stop the Clash of Civilizations" is announced the winner, there's a link to their website.

Well, congrats to them for record traffic to their site, and good timing on the win given their current actions regarding the recent unrest over Tibet.

Madness, I Tell You

Looking at the graph of the top three Movers, I'm reminded of how my job in Web metrics has made me (slightly) cooler. There was honestly a time when I had no idea what March Madness was--none at all. I think I occasionally heard it and associated it with springlike things: allergies and short pants.

One glance at this graph (or the previous years' versions of it), and I see two things: something big is happening related to sports; the sport in question is pretty below the radar until March. After one click-through to the sites currently experiencing huge gains in traffic, pretty much anyone who was always picked last for teams in gym class can sigh and say, "Ah, yes, college basketball championship."

Thank you, Alexa, for giving me a clue about the rest of America's obsessions.