Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Alexa, Amazon's Most Flawed Idea

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the ain't-that-the-truth dept.

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.

1 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The data shows there are problems by jamie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If so, it kind of makes the case that Alexa data is less than useful.

    But that's not all that's going on. In Nov-Dec 2005 it shows Slashdot's traffic roughly tripling, then settling down to roughly double its previous level, in the space of about a month. I have our traffic logs from that time. They were basically flat. All of the variance was Alexa anomalies.