Is there a scam behind manoramaonline reaching the 7th place in Alexa ranking for online newspapers?

[Stupidiot]

It's right now sandwiched in between the Wall Street journal at sixth and the Los Angelese Times at eighth. It is a Malayalam language daily with another section in English that doesn't have much readership. Yet the most readers for the Malayalam newspaper hail from Ireland. Ireland doesn't have such number of Malayalees to offer such a heavy rating. What could be the sham like? I read articles on ways to increase Alexa rankings and how it can easily be manipulated. There are even services that offer instant increase in Alexa ranking. manoramaonline.com varies from other portals in that they also get advertisements directly from advertisers, and most of them believe the hype built around Alexa ranking. Someone please tell me exactly what's going on. Is there any similar stories that you know of?


Sources:
http://tinyurl.com/2lshpv

http://tinyurl.com/2dvpyk

http://tinyurl.com/2z9x2t

[jbrandtc]

Just a little astroturfing (a fake grassroots movement), one of the many handy tools in Guerrilla marketing.

Go to Yahoo search and type, "Top 25 online scams."