All your eggs in Alexa's basket??

[Magnus3x]

Sometimes I get some very interesting phone calls and we discuss traffic and measures and I notice how much Faith is put into Alexa, shit you even see press releases about how a company has achieved a certain number on Alexa.. whippeeee

Interesting read:

One of the big mysteries of the Web is why Alexa remains a part of the measurement landscape. Apparently,
Alexa is now reporting that YouTube is bigger than Google!! ummm I dont think so

For those who don’t know how Alexa operates, it gathers data from toolbars that people install on their browsers.
If you don’t have Alexa installed, none of your Web traffic is counted. The idea, I guess, is the people who do use Alexa offer a fair representation of
the Internet population. It’s the same theory that Nielsen has deployed for years to measure television viewership.

If you believe one monkey behaves like 10,000 others, Alexa’s methodology could be an effective measurement tool.
But the Web is so big with so many different options, there’s no way Alexa’s results can be accurate enough to be taken seriously.

Nevertheless, Alexa continues to be cited as a traffic measurement source - mostly by people whose Web sites conveniently have a high rating.
The good news is there’s growing competition in the measurement market with new services such as Quantcast and Compete battling for attention.
Google is also getting more seriously with the purchase of MeasureMap, Urchin and Blogbeat.

At some point, the Internet Advertising Bureau and some of the major online companies need to come up with an
industry-wide standard to measure traffic. In the meantime, it will only be a positive development if Alexa begins to disappear from the landscape.