How accurate is Alexa? Test reveals all (almost)
We use the traffic ranking tool Alexa to keep an eye on what’s happening on the web; it’s a good measure of the speed with which social media is transforming web habits and economics. But most of its users know that Alexa’s a relative measure, so if a chart’s showing downward movement it doesn’t necessarily mean that traffic is falling.
Alexa measures traffic by encouraging people to download its tracking tool to their browser, and then monitors their usage. Most Alexa users know that it indicates a site’s share of reach, rank and page views by revealing what proportion of the Alexa sample has visited the site, and that there’s no clear indication of absolute numbers. Also, Alexa clients tend to be skewed towardstechies and other early adopters so it doesn’t necessarily give an accurate view of market share across internet users as a whole.
