Taxi Driver Online

I was just wondering, seeing as it was brought to my attention, if anyone out there uses the Alexa toolbar? Symantec have it listed as spyware and the outfit were subject to a class action in the States around the year 2001 for invasion of privacy by way of computer infiltration? However I'm curious if anyone who visits TDO has it purched on top of their browser?

Regards

JD

its just guess work.
the albion forum is one of the biggest fans forums on the net with nearly 2 million posts.
with always 100-200 people on at a time.
but it doesn't come anywhere on alexa.

Not entirely a scientific way of calculating statistics in my opinion.

Regards

JD

Goodness me we are getting a bit techy for TDO.

This thread on another forum sort of gives their game away.

http://forums.seochat.com/alexa-ranking ... -4536.html

_________________
IDFIMH

I suppose if your into marketing or similiar and you wan't to skew your website figures then your going to use such tools as Alexa. However I'm not impressed by anyone who relies on such figures as being accurate and expects me to believe them just because they use a tool bar that the majority of internet users wouldn't touch with a barge pole.

Just one person consistantly using this toolbar on their own site can make their ranking jump tens of thousands of places, so anyone gullible enough to believe that their site is actually getting increased activity should remove the toolbar from their computer and see how their site performs in the real world.

This reference from that site you posted sums it up uniquely.
.....................................

A sample size of about 180K on a given day would be a nice sample if it were a random sample, but Alexa users are an incredibly biased selection of Internet users. Many Alexa users are webmasters and marketing junkies.

They install it on their own systems, and their own heavy use of their own pages causes their Alexa page rank to rise. Then they like Alexa, of course, because it is telling them what they want to hear.

I have been monitoring my own site, which sells art materials, for nearly two years. Initially, before I ever installed the Alexa toolbar, its rank was about 20000. I installed the toolbar on both my home and office PCs about March 2002. Over the next six months, my ranking climbed from about 13000 to 7000. I could even see the periods I was reviewing my site heavily showing up as peaks and valleys.

After I removed the toolbar from both my systems, in August 2002, it fell steadily for several months, ultimately stabilizing and returning to seasonal patterns that are normal for the art supply industry.


Regards

JD