At 15:51 2004-09-30 -0400, Rob McEwen wrote:
I think what you are saying is beside the point because, regardless of Alexa's business practices, the fact remains that:
(1) There is going to be a very, very, very strong correlation of Alexa's rankings to what sites people are actually visiting most often. (Is there a more accurate list out there, anywhere?)
The Alexa list is based on the historical statistical multiple-domain-consolidated behaviour of a relatively small sampling of people gullible enough to install the Alexa toolbar even though it's classified as spyware by major antispyware programs. Those people are not representative in general, and in particular they are more likely to be fooled into all sorts of spam scams. And the actual ranking algorithms are beyond dubious.
(2) I think that the top 20,000 alexa sites are going to have a very high probability of being domains which get mentioned in hams fairly often.
What is that assumption based on? If you said top 50 I could possibly buy that assumption, but below that level Alexa is very unreliable.
Visit www.rockwelldatacorp.com with a browser with Alexa toolbar installed. Should rockwelldatacorp.com be whitelisted? Should domainsponsor.com be whitelisted? This is at position 374 in Alexas traffic ranking...
Patrik