i want to know how alexa gets its ranking , all i know that it takes hits from people using alexa toolbar .... but is that all ? is there a genius mathematical equation they use ? some sample ratios , may be ? ..... i realy want to know

cause i run a website , 2 month now , and my rank on alexa is growing very high , i know my traffic is growing but there is something making me suspicious , my rank went like this :

when i first launched i was in the 6 millions , then jumped to the 3 millions , then 581,xxx , today i reached 484,741 , and i have a graph on alexa

so is this right , or sometime alexa makes some errors ??

and the funny thing is , i am the most active user on my site and i DON'T HAVE AN ALEXA TOOLBAR , i use an opera broweser with no tool bars installed

The more people with the alexa toolbar that visits your site the higher you will rank. That's it.

Maybe it would be wise to compare alexa with the google page rank (PR). They both are useful, and both have their faults. For one, as you have said, Alexa is merely an estimate of traffic. Not everyone has an alexa toolbar and we might have measurement bias if there is a reason why more people would not (or would) have the toolbar who visit your site than others. There is much that would support this. It is a specific impulse that impels one to install alexa, and perhaps this sort of person is more apt to have web traffic in certain places.

Google PR is different in that it is more conceptual rather than pure fact counting. It can also be fooled, quite easily if you know what you are doing. It definitely uses a mathematical formula and perhaps a few of Colonel Sanders secret spices as well :p.

So I suppose we are stuck with using both. One idea I have had is to write a program that integrates both PR and Alexa to give a good overall feel to a website's popularity.

-Rose