I think Alexa works like an opinion pollster with a sample it assumes to be representative of the wider population. An opinion poll needs only to include a couple of people from a minority group, who may be completely unrepresentative of the wider population, to give a picture of that group being of far more significance. So if The Other Fellow had someone who was part of Alexa’s sample who checked his blog every day, then his ratings would rise.

I’d love to know as well. According to them my 3 month change is up 20%. I’m not sure how they got that information because I block their crawler.

From this page though they say that they get their data from users of their toolbar:

http://www.alexa.com/help/traffic-learn-more

It would be odd, but possible – how many Alexa users are there? It’s like opinion polls, how many times have you been asked how you were going to vote? I’ve never ever been contacted by a pollster

I think you should put up a blank page and advise the users of the Alexa Toolbar you know to visit each day to seen how far it would climb.

I have an Alexa rating of 264,000 and Google Analytics gives me 1,784 visits in the last month – about 50 a day. I am entirely convinced that the Alexa rating arises from a friend in England who visits the site every day, frequently comments and uses the Alexa Toolbar.

In the past three months, I have cut my Alexa rating by one-half – from 487,000 to 243,000 – and it has not attracted a single extra advertisement