I am quite aware that the Alexa score is inaccurate. However, the smaller the score, the more accurate the information. It is quite easy to manipulate the score of a site in the 100K plus, but once a site hits below 100K, it is typically an indication that the site gets substantial traffic.

Would you consider my conclusion above to be fairly accurate? If so, allow me to move on to my question.

I often look at Alexa to get a feel as to how my site is doing as compared to my competition. If my site has an Alexa score of 55.000, and my competition has a score of 235.000, is it safe to assume that my site gets more traffic than he does?

Appreciate your feedback.

The answer is both yes and no.

Alexa results can be a little skewed because it bases its results from the data collected from its toolbar. Many people associated with the Internet - web developers, search engine marketers and the like form the bulk of the users. Again, most of the users are based in the US.

The bottomline is if your site gets the majority of visitors from the US, then Alexa results might be valid for you. Again it depends on your industry.

I am in the Investing indusrt, and yes the majority comes from the US.

So far we are basically in agreement. So, here is my real question.

How come my site is 55.000, and many very well known investment sites are above 300.000?

>>How come my site is 55.000, and many very well known investment sites are above 300.000?

The figure about 300,000 is probably the correct figure reflecting the usage pattern of a 'normal' sample - in this case many people dealing with the investment industry.

On the other hand, you appear to be well versed with the Internet trade
practices (or else you won't be asking these questions here )
and that may be the reason for your site showing a better figure in Alexa.

Other things being equal, people who are SEO savvy, tend to get a better Alexa rank due to a combination of many factors.

Yes, I am well versed, and recognize that is part of the reason why my site ranks 55k. However, the other sites I am refereing to are well known national gurus.

There must be something else going on here.

If my site has an Alexa score of 55.000, and my competition has a score of 235.000, is it safe to assume that my site gets more traffic than he does?

I would say that you could reasonably conclude that the site that has an Alexa score of 55.000 would have more pageviews than a site that has a score of 235.000. But, you have to consider the source of the data-and Alexa has been WAY off in many cases.

To really make up your mind, you have to look at how Alexa determines their rankings. They tell us how they do it here. According to that page:

Alexa's traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period.

I don't know too many people who have the Alexa toolbar installed. So, I would guess that it's not all that accurate. And, I've also seen cases where a site's Alexa ranking has been manipulated on purpose to appear that there's a lot of traffic going to it.

I have been hearing this manipulation of Alexa rankings in this forum. But how do you do that ?
Not that we are interested to manipulate artificially our Alexa ranks. But many of us use Alexa rankings to determine the scope of traffic our target sites get for comparative studies.

Does Alexa ranking play a factor on a sites ranking across search engines? If so which ones?