Alexa toolbar is considered spyware

Did...you...read...the...article? It's only 4 paragraphs...

Anyhow, I don't use the toolbar, but like those same features on their website. Related links has often shown me sites I'd never heard of.

I have Alexa...you recommended it before so I went and looked at it, liked it, and got it.  I like that I can get real, unbiased information about the site I'm visiting on it, and it also offers me related links to go check out...all in all I'm very happy with it!  Thanks!

The question is, can you trust it?

I won't let it near any of my machines.

Well, I uninstalled it by mistake because Spybot said it was spyware. I didn't look at the settings too deaply and deleted it.

But I have to admit, Alexa is pretty good at what it does. Pretty cool ranking system and the relative links are also pretty cool too. I also like the thubm nail look of some of the sites as well.

I guess I will re-install it.

They also had a affiliate toolbar to Amazon.com but I couldn't recomment it because I felt maybe it could be spyware. But I guess if you warn people about what it does, then they can make up their mind on using it or not.

>>> But I have to admit, Alexa is pretty good at what it does


The trouble with Alexa is it only tells you the ranking of a site among users who use the Alexa toolbar, not among all websurfers. In other words, the only input to the rankings is from users who've installed the toolbar. Most users won't go near it because of its spyware rep, rightly or wrongly. Also most ordinary users won't install it because they could care less about the ranking of a site. Thus the rankings are extremely biased. And most more sophisticated users won't install it because it's just another clunky add-on........

Want to up your Alexa rankings considerably? Just install Alexa and visit your own site once or twice a day. Their user base is so small that, yes, even one user can make a big difference in the rankings. Try it, you'll see a large increase in your rankings over a week or two, without any concurrent increase in your actual visitors...

You know I love ya' Frogboy, but I don't buy into Alexa.....

its trustworthy...it reports the sites you visit; and you know it does.

but; you cant really trust the ranks, although..there is not really any other way of tracking a website's rank.. it is only ranked based on those who have the toolbar. a number of users which is getting smaller and smaller do to antispyware software.

alexa does no harm.. and i enjoy it as a service. but i also do not have its toolbar. google toolbar takes the space.

There's a FireFox extension that gives the thumbnails from Alexa.. Not sure if that gets counted in the rankings or not.

Yeah, I read it. I still believe it is spyware. All my antispyware programs label it Spyware. Since I paid good money for my programs I will follow their advice. It's kept my computer clean, adware,spyware, and virus free for many years now.

lilstarfish, I'm with you!

craeonics peeks

Look! Tek's climbed 382,531 places. We're in the top 1000000 now! Whoohoo!!

Makes you wonder how many sites are actually out there.

Anyone who knows anything on statistics can tell you that you can get a valid sample with only a few thousand people. And Alexa's user base is  pretty large.

Is it precisely accurate? Obviously not.  But once you get inside the top 250,000 most popular sites it gets pretty accurate I would say.

Paranoid people won't use it of course. But that doesn't scew the results (unless you're going to argue that there is a special, magical site that paranoid people visit).  Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. are the top ranked sites with Alexa.

Did...you...read...the...article?

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I can almost hear the exasperation....

Brad, if you're interested in statistics, you must know that to get a real valid result, you need a completely and truly random sampling. Alexa's sampling certainly isn't random, as it targets a very specific kind of people. Casual users won't install Alexa because, well because they don't know about it and they couldn't care less about it if they did. Most computer techies won't touch it either cause they tend to be paranoid about sending back "home" any kind of information. Actually, most Alexa users are probably people who are interested in statistics in the first place; they like to kow how sites rank comparatively to each other, etc. But truth is there is no way to determine exactly if Alexa users are a fair representation of the people in general. Alexa stats could never be used to say that such a site ranks top 1000 for all Web users. All Alexa can tell you is that such site ranks top 1000 among Alexa users. Saying any more than that is just a wild guess and has nothing to back it with. I believe you went to business school Brad, didn't you? I think I remember reading something about this from you. Could be wrong. But if you had stats classes in college, you already kow what I'm saying and you know that Alexa can't be used as a fact, and actually not even as a good enough estimation, as we have no idea if Alexa users have the same surfing habits as the population in general.