Just thought it's interesting to note that Google's Alexa ranking (past 3 months) is between 3 and 4 while Yahoo's consistently no. 1 and Hotmail's consistently no. 2.
Its all down to the amount of people who visit the site with the toolbar. Obviously, Google doesn't receive as many visitors with the toolbar installed as Yahoo or hotmail.
As far as search is concerned the figures for the worldwide English speaking demographic is approximately (in percentage searches). Google 33% Yahoo! 24% MSN 19% AOL 12% As far as the most visited commercial entities are concerned the top five visited are: 1 Yahoo! Sites 2 Time Warner Network 3 MSN-Microsoft Sites 4 EBay 5 Google Sites Source: comScore Networks (Was Media Metrix) As far as Alexa stats are concerned if you want to know what the users of the Alexa tool bar are doing they will tell you. If you want to know what the other 99.99% of users are doing you have to sample them (Stats 101). Alexa have created a nice litlle business built on the premise that the average joe would rather buy the crystal than do the maths. - Michael
I imagine a lot of the visitors to Google who are the kind to install toolbars would install the google toolbar instead I think the numbers would be pretty different if the stats were based on google's toolbar. MSN is a total fraud, because it has the obvious advantage of being the default in Internet Exploder (correct me if I'm wrong). Considering the Alexa Toolbar is PC IE 5.0+ only, it means that all other browsers' information is being missed out on. According to my website's stats, that's a good 27%+ of internet users that are not even part of the sample. And it's an important 27%, because there are a lot of netscapers and aol users with different default sites. The Alexa stats are kind of like polling one state of the US to figure out who is likely to be president of the whole country. It's still a reasonable source of information, considering a lack of anything similar, but far from accurate.
It makes you wonder then... why is Alexa still in business and why are they still quoted in forums that facilitate website sales.
Because people like to quantify stuff. If the site you're selling has a descent Alexa rank, you might as well use it in your pitch. Alexa is owned by Amazon if I'm notm istaken. They won't go out of busy that easy. Amazon needs them for diversification reasons.
Great point T0PS. Alexa, to web savvy people, is nothing more than 'bragging rights'. I'm sure its helped sell a website or two also, but for the most part, its really all about peoples interest in statistics.