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by pavs 5822 days ago
Its different from political poll because it is not random. Its like looking at internet usage pattern of Indian internet users and predicting the traffic of Reddit, when most of the traffic of reddit comes from USA/EU/Canada.

And that's exactly whats happening, Alexa relies on people who install Alexa toolbar and from what I remember reading most of Alexa users are from South-east asia, or more precisely, from India.

This is so dubious, its not even funny.

2 comments

They have rankings by nation in addition to the overalls. Their base is far from a scientific sample, but I think they give better ballpark figures than some give them credit for.

Their "what's hot" section often has stuff about wordpress and the like, so there are obviously many webmasters. There is plenty of American Idol and all that, also. I have no idea, but I'd guess they advertise the toolbar in different places and maybe allow it to be bundled with screensavers or whatever.

I think that the only tech-savvy people that use Alexa toolbar are webmasters who are trying to get their Alexa numbers up, basically.
IOW Selection Bias is the problem here.