Cycle Show 2010

Alexa are a company that have a large number of users whom install the Alexa toolbar.

When the toolbar is installed the users are asked: What sex are you? How much do you earn? What's your education level? Are you at work or home?

Then alexa watch what people do on the internet, and compile a league of all sites they see.

If they don't know enough about a site (our case), then Alexa simply extrapolate the numbers and make a best guess.

Their best guess is way off, but because they have millions of installed toolbars even their way off best guesses are trusted more than me giving actual stats from Google Analytics (which doesn't include demographics by the very nature of the anonymous aggregation they use).

The only way to correct their best guess is to use the alexa toolbar, which in turns give them more info about other stuff we look at and improves their game.

Alternatively you can view it as spyware, as it's basically only able to compile the league and extrapolated demographics from observing what millions of people are doing.

None of the demographics are fuelled directly by LFGSS data, no LFGSS data is disclosed in any way (besides, I don't know that stuff... I don't even know which of you are boys or girls). Alexa are able to do what they do by observing people who installed the toolbar and agreed to be observed and then making stab in the dark guesses from the data that they collect.

I have no doubt I'm not the first person to point this out, but: the only data reliably offered by the toolbar must be numbers on people who are dumb enough to install a toolbar, surely?