[Foundation-l] the only site in the top X sites that doesn't sell you anything

[Amir E. Aharoni]

Quite a lot of people know that Wikipedia is one of the 10 most popular
sites in the world.

Much less people notice that among the most popular Wikipedia is the only
one that doesn't sell them anything: Google has Adwords, Microsoft sells its
products and all the other websites have advertising banners or animations
of some kind. I didn't notice it until Sue Gardner mentioned it in a meet-up
in New York city last August. It is a very impressive piece of information;
since i heard it, i tell it to people and it makes them raise their
eyebrows. Sue mentioned BBC as the only popular website that gets anywhere
near Wikipedia in terms of being a non-profit, but even BBC shows some ads
in its videos.

I look at Alexa's top websites every few days and i see that this assertion
is quite true: among the top 100 Alexa websites there are usually no
non-profit organization. WordPress.org and Mozilla.org appear there
occasionally, but nothing except that (WordPress.com is high on that list,
but it shows ads on some blogs).

But is Alexa precise? Is it a good measurement of a website's popularity, or
should i base myself on a better ranking when i talk to people about it?

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore