New Alexa Rankings Algorithm

Bloggers and advertisers that depend on stats, rankings, and traffic information from Alexa can now rejoice over the fact that rankings won’t solely be derived from the web users who are using the cumbersome Alexa toolbar.  The announcement was officially posted on the blog yesterday, although rankings have begun changing (and a button was also placed below rankings indicating the change) today.

From the Alexa Blog:

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.

For those of you focused on monetizing your blog, it might be a good time (now or as updates become more pronounced) to update your stats on your advertising page if you notice any significant changes.  For example, this blog jumped up approximately 120,000 places, while the ranking in other countries is not as high.

Historical data is only available for sites dating to August of 2007, but all historical data will be added over the coming weeks.  More features may be added soon, such as more refinements to the ranking system, which may come as a result of their drop in traffic from competitor Compete.

What are your initial reactions to this change, or is it simply an insignificant update to a statistics tool that needs a major reworking?