How does Alexa work?
 

I have a site at about 87K and comparing it to other sites it should mean it gets a fair ammount of traffic.

but it only gets 30 or 40 hits a day.

I have other sites at around 300K that get more traffic.

How does it work - or is it all crap anyway?

It all depends on who has their toolbar installed. So if you have a higher percentage of your visitors with toolbars installed the traffic numbers will be flawed in your favour, vice versa.

BAsed on the Alexa toolbar bro

I thought thats what it was - I wonder then why one site would attract more Alexa users than another?

The site that seems to be too high is mainly SE traffic - I suppose that could be it.

depends on the people if they have the toolbar installed or not :)

lol - yeah :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

who the hell installs that alexa toolbar? i personally dont know anyone who uses it

Yea Alexa is pretty crappy, for accurately gauging the worth of a website. Until your in the top 1 or 2 thousand id say, the numbers arent anywhere near accurate. The higher your page rank, the less accurate i think it will be. On a little junk/testing domain i have the rank was at around 900,000 after just hitting it once for a few days, with the toolbar.

If you have google analytics, its interesting (and very telling) to compare the differences in the traffic reporting.

alexa comes on a lot of new computers.:upsidedow