How accurate is Alexa?

How accurate is Alexa?

Alexa.com is web information company that provides  statistics on millions of websites worldwide.

Many webmasters use it as a means of evaluating a website traffic and worth. For the most part alexa rank is accurate once you get below the 100,000 mark. Sites with an alexa rank of over 100,000 are in the “error for margin area” meaning the result are not that accurate. The site may get 1,000 people a day, or 8,000 people a day. There really is no way to tell. The closer the site gets to absolute zero (not -277 degrees) the more accurate the results become.

Before we get further into this topic we should note that alexa gets its traffic details from the alexa toolbar. So if you want to bump your alexa rank install the toolbar and you will automatically boost your alexa rank. It’s really that easy to manipulate, to a certain extent. You may see your site drop from 1,000,000 to 800,000 or 700,000 just from a simple toolbar install.

Because alexa gets its data from a toolbar that is geared towards webmasters, it is safe to say that sites that are tech, internet, or I.T. related will usually have a lower rank than sites with the same amount of traffic / popularity in say the gaming, or shopping genre.

So what do you think? How accurate is Alexa really?

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