How important is Alexa traffic

Alexa and it’s rankings have been much debated by SEO’s - some say it’s important, some think otherwise. Here’s a snap shot and my thoughts on the topic.

For —-
Some SEO’s think that Alexa is important because

• Google PR and Alexa traffic is something that you can boast about when selling your site to someone.
• Google has collaborative associations with Amazon ans Alexa - so there’s some sort of authority attached with the term - “Alexa Traffic”
• As Tinu put’s it - “It is the closest thing to a universal, impartial 3rd party measure of traffic we have.”

Against ———
Now for the reasons why it’s not considered important.

• The traffic data suggested by Alexa is partial - it’s only a measure of how many Alexa toolbar users visited your site.
• The term “Alexa Traffic” is wrong - it should be “Alexa Toolbar users”
• It ignores the number of other non-Alexa toolbar users that visited your site.

I think it’s a very silly thing to be debated about - when it’s clear that Alexa traffic is nothing but a fancy term. It’s got nothing to do with SEO, or traffic. Definitely not something that can be counted as Web 2.0