Alexa Web Information Web Service - Accurate?

Anyone know how accurate the Alexa Information Web Service is for tracking the upper sites. Like the top 5000? I'm looking to do some research and it's pretty cheap, but not sure if it's accurate.

Accurate being within 15% of the truth.

Alexa taking data from those browsers where alexa toolbar is installed.
It is not totally accurate.

Dont worry about alexa ranking. It doesnt give accurate result.

I think people are ill informed what alexa is, alexa is a tool that counts site visits traffic etc. from PEOPLE who have the alexa toolbar installed. So you can say since not everyone has the toolbar that is is completely inaccurate? wrong . Millions of people have the alexa bar installed, so use it as an average, so out of lets say they have 5 million people that use the toolbar, that you have decent rating. The use that average and put it to scale on ALL the people who do not have it. the traffic patterns , ranking etc. will and should be pretty darn close, yes its not 100 percent accurate, but if you put it to SCALE then you do have some legit data, again AVERAGES. You know during elections people take polls and say this guy is winning by FAR, no they didnt poll every single person in the united states, they polled 1000 people and they get their average and then put it to SCALE on the population and are able to say that THIS GUY IS WINNING .... hope that helped

Alexa gives you some information on people who have the toolbar installed, and you may want to attribute that 'sample' of people to a population, but the problem of demographics comes into play. If it was a random sample, the information could be descriptor of a population. But it's not. I don't have it installed and don't know anyone who does. There may be lots of people out there who do have it installed, but who are they and why do they have it installed? If you can describe the 'typical' person who installs their toolbar, then the data set is relatively applicable to that sub-group.

So - Alexa information might tell you something, but you probably don't really know what it is. Alexa data is at best an indication of what sites people who use Alexa visit.

E.g.: You can take data from Sears shoppers and ascribe that as a descriptor of the population, but who/what is that sample demographic and attributes? And is it valid as a population descriptor? It definitely is not. Millions of people shop there, but that doesn't say anything about the population. To take data from Sears and use it to try to describe a population isn't statistically valid. To take data from Alexa and use it to try to describe a population isn't statistically valid either.

it was more of if you have good rankings on alexa then you more than likely have decent if not good rankings / traffic from all of the people that dont use it, basically if you can get people who use the alexa bar to visit your site then your probably already have a decent stream of traffic from the people who dont have it. there is no describing data like you are talking about, alexa doesnt give demographics and it was never meant to( because its impossible unless everyone accurately enters their info in when they use the internet) it is a tool to provide TRAFFIC DATA, VOLUME to be specific, and a few other neat things like page views etc.), There is no caucasian or african american stats nor age , income level, specific location etc.( actually they show country percentages) Not sure how you started with all of this talk about demographics and how your example is remotely related in an way ..........................................

I think you miss my point. People who use the Alexa tool bar are their own demographic cross section.

If you have some data which validates your hypothesis that people who use Alexa tool bar are representative of the internet user population, I'd like to see it.

As to my use of the word 'demographics', I should have defined it more closely as aligned to aspects such as 'geek' vs. typical working family member vs. children vs. company management vs. company CEOs vs. etc., unrelated to race or nationality. I have no idea what 'type' of person uses Alexa and there is no way to find out as far as I can tell.

I've had web sites online since January 1995 (my current main site is Elsmar) and I have never seen Alexa data correlate with what my server logs tell me. I'll believe my server logs before I'll believe in Alexa data.

I dont have data, i dont own alexa nor really care about it r use it very often, it is a broad tool that gives you a hint at what your rankings / traffic are. as far as alexa people being their own demographic isnt that the same with every site? and regarding


" As to my use of the word 'demographics', I should have defined it more closely as aligned to aspects such as 'geek' vs. typical working family member vs. children vs. company management vs. company CEOs vs. etc., unrelated to race or nationality. I have no idea what 'type' of person uses Alexa and there is no way to find out as far as I can tell. "

contradicting yourself, you claim they are nerds then you say you have no clue about their demographic then you thorw everyone of them under the category of " nerd"
pretty sure its a safe bet that not everyone that uses alexa is a nerd and not everyone that uses alexa is a kid, BUT id bet that they are pretty average as far as covering people from all walks of life, heck my comp came installed with the alexa bar when i bought it, i never installed it. So if this happended to me im assuming it happened to people that wouldnt fall into your nerd category as well. All walks of life use alexa so again it is probably more accurate to apply it to a population than just bunching everyone under the demographic of nerd and using that as your demographic. my opinion but im done with this thread .... good luck in the new year

I agree with that.

alexa just give estimate result, well for me i believe its still help since i don't know the exact traffic of my competitors..

It's utterly worthless when it comes to tracking down backlinks to a site however. Those backlinks are sometimes 6 months to a year old.

I have said lots of time alexa is worthless.