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.

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(,

Sometimes, when I look at Alexa's Movers and Shakers, I discover some hip new site everyone's clicking on. And sometimes, I look at the graph and realize, oh, yeah, the Oscars just happened.

[Note: Alexa's traffic data are still delayed by about a week, so this post is a bit stale.] Today's Movers graph pretty much tells a short story about how if you're a scandal-plagued starlet recovering from substance abuse, and you pose as an American icon from the past, the site that posts your photos will get a lot of traffic. You're free to view the photos,

As some of you have noticed, our traffic data is a few days behind. We are working hard to catch up, and you will see new data appearing over the next several days. Thank you for your patience!

[Note: due to some technical difficulties, the Movers data have not been updated since Friday the 15th. Rather than hold them frozen at those posted Tuesday the 12th of February, I'm updating them to the last available, reliable Movers data.] You look at the graph and you see Mozilla. Your brain says, "Yeah, I just updated Firefox.

When I look at the current graph of the Movers and Shakers, I have three thoughts. 1( Oh right, I did just recently have a Firefox update. 2( Man, that Warcraft III Defense of the Ancients game is really popular. [note: I'm not a gamer and initially confused World of Warcraft with Warcraft III. A kind commenter named Ryan pointed out my mistake and I have corrected this item. Thank you, Ryan.

When you look at the graph of our Movers and Shakers, the most striking increase among the top three is from the Mover in the number-two position, NoScript. This Firefox add-on is already popular; it has a three-month Traffic Rank of 3,799. While the recent release of a new version of NoScript has certainly given the site's traffic a boost,

As some of you have noticed, we temporarily stopped updating Alexa traffic information on January 31. We discovered some anomalies in the traffic rankings, including some inexplicable drops in traffic for a number of sites in China. We decided to halt the traffic updates until we resolved the issue. We expect to correct the problems later this evening. Thank you for your patience!

One of the things I love about Alexa's Movers and Shakers is that you can sometimes find the cool thing everyone's clicking on-even if you're too busy to comb the websites like Slashdot and Digg that track these sorts of things. Such is the case with the adorable screen cleaner flash file on linein.org.

"Buy a List!" You have probably seen this link posted on Alexa's pages. This offering came about because we learned over the years that visitors to our website were interested in learning which sites were in a particular range of Traffic Rank according to our data. This Top Sites List has been a simple list of Alexa's top-ranked websites from 1 to 10,000-or even 100,000 sites. Over time,

About a month ago, Microsoft Live passed MSN in daily rank; you should expect to see this reflected in Alexa's three-month rank any day now. The next sites in line for succession - MySpace and Facebook - currently lack the reach to upset the Top5. In the middle of this Microsoft dance are Google and YouTube. The following graph illustrates some interesting trends. As you can see,

As a follow-up to my post about "The New Black," here are more graphs for your consideration. I actually intended to write this up last week but I guess late is the new early. Jumping right in, as a computer scientist, I'm interested in programing language trends. The graph below was seeded from the list of programming languages on Wikipedia.

Summer is over and I am putting together my to-do list for Alexa, trying to figure out what we are going to be working on for the next year. But before I break out my pencil, I thought I'd ask you first. If you have about a minute and a half, take this brief survey and tell me what's on the top of your Alexa wish list: Survey Thanks.

Many of you probably noticed inrainbows.com on our movers and shakers graph last week. This site is where Radiohead released their new album for free download in mp3 format on Oct 10th. If you want the official hard copy CD you can name your own price. This release and distribution method is a first by a well-known heavyweight artist and you can bet the record industry will be watching closely.

Inspired by a graph from DIAGRAM and an old meme, I decided to take a look and see if the internet could help me figure out what is the new what. Variations on this is the new that are fairly common on the web; using Alexa's Web Search Service to search for the phrase "* is the new *" turned up several million instances of documents that are on hand in our archive. Unlike other search services,

Some of you noticed that this week, Google and MSN traded places in Alexa's Top 10 list. Actually, it's better to say that google.com and msn.com traded places, in order to avoid getting confused. This is mostly due to a significant drop in traffic for msn.com; in fact, because Alexa's Top Sites list is based on three months of data,

Last week, the Google Blog posted a story about search trends and video game systems, namely a comparison between searches for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii. Looking at the Google Trends graph next to an Alexa Traffic Graph )reach( for xbox.com, playstation.com, and wii.com, you can see mostly the same trends. In 2005-Q4, the Xbox is clearly the winner in both searches and traffic,

Now that Fred Thompson has )finally( officially announced that he is running for the presidency, we can check his Web site's Alexa stats to see how popular he is with the online crowd. It turns out that he is popular. Here is the graph of the republican candidates: That red line with the big spike... that is Fred08.com.

Tennis was very popular when I was growing up. We had all the big stars like Connors, McEnroe and Borg. And the ladies were popular too, with Evert and Navratilova. Golf on the other hand was much less popular. Tennis waxed and Golf waned. Over the last 10 years or so, courses have changed. Golf is very popular now and tennis.... not so much.