May 17, 2005

Alexa Toolbar, handy spyware

I use the Alexa Toolbar already for a long time. It is classified spyware by a lot of virus software, and actually it is. It records the websites you visit and uses this data to compile a worldwide ranking of websites. It also automaticly submits the websites you visit to their own search engine. The company is owned by Amazon, and the toolbar has some Amazon stuff build in, it even invites users to compile their own toolbar with their Amazon affiliate id in to distribute it. Its a great marketing tool for Amazon, and who knows what else Alexa does with this data besides selling it.

I don’t think the ranking data from the Alexa toolbar is very accurate. It can only use data from people that actually use the toolbar, and until everybody does, its not accurate. When I make a new website, and visit it a few times, I have an Alexa ranking within a few days, and I am sure no one else has seen the site. Also, the sites that I manage get inflated Alexa rankings because I visit them a lot. I knew a webmaster from a site, actually he told me about the Alexa toolbar. When he stopped managing this particular site, the Alexa ranking of this site dropped enourmously.

But now the fun part of the Alexa toolbar. The toolbar also shows websites that are visited by people visiting the website you are looking at. And because a lot of webmasters use the toolbar, you can find out relations between websites, and this can be handy information.

So the toolbar is more accurate with sites that webmasters and web marketeers visit a lot, and the relations it shows between websites are sometimes very revealing and surprising.

Alexa spies, but also for you

http://www.alexa.com/

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