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Alexa rankings were once fickle things - changing on a whim. 50,000 visitors with no toolbar on one day? Your rankings tanked. 100 visitors with the toolbar? Hello, Top 100k!

Sadly, this mildly amusing fluctuation has been replaced with a more reliable system. That’s right: new Alexa rankings.

“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.”

What does this change mean for you? It means that blogs and websites with high percentages of web-savvy Alexa toolbar users will follow the route of the Hindenburg (you know, the zeppelin?) whilst sites with high quantities of traffic will actually get the rankings they deserve. The big question on everyones mind is namely the following: “will it work?” Blog Badly’s ranking shot down 100,000 points after the update, so I’m not complaining. Still, there’s sure to be ripples around the net either shocked/amused/scared/happy/outraged about these changes. For example, John Chow’s ranking went up 14,000 points while John Cow went up over 80,000 points.

Is Alexa ranking still mostly meaningless? Yes, but now it’s slightly better - and at least they’re trying to make their rankings fairer. Of course, you have to forget all the things your first grade soccer coach told you: effort isn’t all that matters. Webmasters want fair rankings and people want reliable knowledge. Lets hope Alexa can shape up and provide both.