Alexa has been working on their “traffic rankings” interface over the weekend, probably in response to Google’s Trends. I noticed some buggy behavior and then some broken images but now it seems to all be in place.

Enhancements include:

• New date ranges. The new ranges include 7 days, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years or max.
• Compare more sites. You can now compare up to 5 sites instead of just two.
• Smoothing. Instead of the sharp ups and downs of the line graph the averages are used to make a smoother transition between dates. There are 4 stages for this.

As before, you can switch from “medium” to “large” view. And “Rank” and “Page Views” is still available.

The final thing I noticed is it seems to run a lot faster. Go ahead and play with it yourself to see. You can see the 14th Colony trends here.

Oddly, I couldn’t find an official announcement from Alexa and it seems their press page hasn’t been updated in months. This may be a “soft launch” (or beta).

Finaly, I think it is important to note that Alexa data is far from perfect though it can be useful. You can get more information about what Alexa is good for in the 8 Free Web Site Tracking Tools post.

PS. If you can’t see it clearly the image above compares this site with SEO Scoop (in red) and the new SEO blog kichus.in (in green). Donna kicks ass. :-) But look for great things from Kichus. He’s been playing the forum circuit for a while and is very knowledgeable.

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