Alexa Toolbar

Alexa Top 500

Over the past five years we have received countless requests to publish Alexa's list of top sites. To commemorate this special day, we are releasing the Alexa Top 500. This list shows the top traffic sites in the world. But, be prepared - they are not what you expect. We are also releasing Alexa's Movers & Shakers today which shows the sites with growing or declining numbers of visitors over the previous week. Both of these features can be accessed via links on Alexa's front page, or from the blue navigation bar above.

full release

You may have noticed that the "Beta" stamp has been removed from Alexa's logo. We are now out of beta and into full release. Along with the release, we've also changed a few things:

Search Results: We have enhanced the search results so that we now indent same-site results. We've also added the spelling suggestions feature, so for example, if you accidentally type "quark gluon plazma" (it happens to me all the time), we will suggest "quark gluon plasma". Lastly, if some results were omitted, we have included a link on the last page of results to re-run the search with the omitted results included.

Alexa Beta

The Alexa Toolbar 6.5 is here! Alexa's beta test was a great success. We have had loads of useful feedback and have made a few enhancements. You can see the result of Alexa's efforts by downloading the Alexa Toolbar 6.5. Note: If you participated in the Beta test, you will need to download the latest full release of the toolbar.

Traffic Rankings

Alexa's Traffic Rankings have changed for the better. After months of preparation, we are releasing Alexa's new and improved traffic rankings. There are two major differences between the new traffic rankings and the old ones:

Site Definition: We have simplified Alexa's methodology here. Now all traffic is rolled up into the primary domain name for a site. So, for example, carpoint and slate are now counted as part of msn.com (since that's where they are located). The exception of course is Personal Home Pages, where we can identify them, which are treated as separate entities with separate traffic rankings that aren't rolled up into the domains.

Ranking: Previously we based Alexa's rankings on page views... all page views made on almost all Alexa services were counted, compiled over a 3 month period and ranked. Now, we've gotten a little smarter. Multiple page views made by the same user are discarded (no more spoofing!) and only validated Toolbar page turns will be used. Also, and this is totally new for us, we are using Reach (total number of unique users) as part of Alexa's ranking calculation. Based on this new information, we calculate a "geometric mean" for Reach Rank and Page View Rank to determine Alexa's new Traffic Rank. We have a more detailed explanation available for those who must know.

Alexa Toolbar

On April 25th, we launched a totally revamped Alexa website plus the beta of a new Toolbar. There were numerous changes to Alexa's services, including:

Search Engine: Alexa is now a Search Engine, with world class Google results coupled with Alexa's Site Information and Amazon.com's look and feel. We are pretty excited about it and think you will be too.
Traffic Rankings: Alexa has a new Traffic Rankings feature where we compare sites to one another. It is a convenient way to see multiple competing sites side by side. We hope to have many more enhancements to this feature coming soon.
The Missing Link: We have enlisted the writing talents of Charles Pappas, the "Surf Guru" of Yahoo Internet Life, to write a weekly column about the Internet. Look forward to a weekly e-mail newsletter... details to come.
Site Details: You may have noticed the Alexa's site details pages look a lot like Amazon.com. Well that should not be a great surprise to most people who are aware that we are actually owned by Amazon.com. This is part of an evolutionary process of bringing the Alexa services into a common look and feel with Alexa's parent company Amazon.com.
Alexa Toolbar 6.5 Beta: Finally, the long-awaited Alexa Toolbar 6.5 is here! This new toolbar incorporates Alexa's new Alexa Web Search plus some other nifty features. And, it is smaller and faster than the previous version. If you would like to participate in Alexa's beta test, visit the Alexa Toolbar 6.5 download page.