Alexa, Amazon's Most Flawed Idea

Rub3X writes "The Alexa ranking system is naturally flawed. The data should never be treated as accurate, as it's easily manipulated, and not supported for most browsers in the world. It's an estimate, and nothing more. " I've been saying that forever, but unfortunately for me, since it's a number on a website that is considered "Real" to some, I'm supposed to take it seriously. I imagine this is a problem for many webmasters out there.

it's useful on a relative scale

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? &range=&size=large&compare_sites=&y=r&url=ww.com [alexa.com]

not on an absolute scale, but you can compare trends, and if YOU don't fake the data you're ok :)

remove space for link to work

File Upload Sites & their ranking

[in2mind]

Services like Megaupload.com force Non-American/Non-european users to install Alexa toolbar to download the file.

That explains why Alexa has file-upload sites such as Megaupload,rapidshare in the top 10 sites of most countries...

Re:Error in article

[hclyff]

According to this [alexa.com], there is no FF version. There are third party plugins for monitoring only.

Polling data in general

[MrNougat]

Whenever you conduct a poll, and that's what Alexa is doing, you are always excluding data from those who do not respond to polls (for whatever reason). It's an inherent flaw in polling.

Re:The data shows there are problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Truly they have issues. Simple testing of any site using the following can show that things don't measure up.

By using a dial up account you can boost your ratings with just 10 minutes a day surfing.

With Alexa's Toolbar installed on IE and a good old free NetZero account 5 minutes in the morning before work browsing 22 or more pages and 5 minutes in the evening doing the same 22 pages will send your new site in the 100K rating area. Add 2 people doing that and you grow.
This is not at all what you can consider accurate and you all have said that but what about falsely inflating so you look better then your competition? Who Cares? Unless you are trying to sell your site and think Alexa rating can help you profit.

Just another junk tracking tool for marketing companies that to the normal webmasters should be ignored completely.