The Alexa Toolbar is an application produced by Alexa Internet, is a Browser Helper Object for Internet Explorer on Microsoft Windows that is used by Alexa to measure website statistics. It includes a popup blocker, a search engine entry box, a link to Amazon.com, a link to Alexa, information about the current Alexa ranking of the website that the user is visiting, and links relevant to the site the user is browsing. By early 2005 there had been over 10 million downloads of the toolbar, according to Alexa. But the company does not provide info on how many of them are used. According to one estimate made in March 2003, Alexa had a sample size of 180,000.
There are some privacy concerns about the toolbar, as it requests site data from Alexa and there is no information on how long Alexa stores these usage trails. Because of this, many anti-spyware programs label it as such. Though it is usually installed willingly, third parties sometimes distribute the toolbar or access Alexa’s API.
A third-party developer supplied plugin for the Firefox browser served as the only solution after Amazon abandoned its A9 toolbar. On July 16, 2007, Alexa released an official toolbar for Firefox called Sparky.
Source:wikipedia
Related Posts:
Do Alexa Auto-Surfs improve my website traffic?Alexa auto surf may work for new sites with very low Alexa ranking and no page rank. Using any auto-surf is considered a black hat technique and penalize by search engine like Google, specially if you are showing AdSense ads on the site.
How do I get started with Alexa?There are two easy ways to start using Alexa. If you are using Internet Explorer, visit this page and download the Alexa Toolbar.
If you’re using Firefox, download the SearchStatus extension which displays the Alexa Rank, Google PageRank as well as other useful features.
Does the Alexa widget improve your Alexa rank?Some webmasters ensure that using a widget helps improving your Alexa rank because it would load with each page view and no matter whether your visitors have the toolbar/plugin installed or not. A widget would supply traffic data for Alexa to calculate your ranking.
How accurate are the Alexa rankings?Alexa ranking is not accurate, and can be manipulated. Alexa data is based on a statistical sample consisting of website users who have downloaded the Alexa Toolbar.
How Important is Alexa Ranking?Alexa tracks a website’s traffic history, and gives a ranking based upon the number of visitors using Alexa toolbar. We all know that Alexa ranking lacks in accuracy, but Alexa rank is important because:
There are lots of customers and advertisers who take Alexa rankings seriously, many “money maker program” still count this to determine how popular is our site.
What are the Benefits of Having a Low Alexa Ranking?Basically, If your website has a good Alexa ranking, this means that you can increase your sales having a popular website that can be compare with its competitors. As opposed to Google's PageRank, the lower your ranking number, the better.
Is a low Alexa traffic ranking good?The LOWER your rating on Alexa the better. The power in the Alexa ranking is your ability to tell if someone is telling the truth about their traffic levels, whether its good to purchase advertising space on a website and you want to see if they are really getting the unique hits they say they are.
