Putting to Rest the Alexa Myth

For some reason the myth that Alexa data is an accurate reflection of a web site's value is still being passed around among new web site owners and small online businesses. While many have written articles explaining why it's not generally a good idea to use Alexa as a way to judge a site's value, Google's Matt Cutts has a blog post this week that gives one of the most compelling arguments I've seen.

Matt's post talks about his interest in checking Alexa to see if Ask.com was experiencing a spike in traffic due to their new line of television commercials. Out of curiosity, Matt decided to run his own data along side Ask.com's in a chart. Turns out that Alexa believes that Matt Cutts has 1/4th the reach of Ask.com. While I think Matt is great, I don't think anyone can argue that those stats don't serve as compelling proof of the theory that Alexa data is highly skewed by the number of webmasters that run the toolbar.