This entry was supposedly published weeks ago but I’m just now seeing that it did not publish. The reason seems to be related with a bug in the nightly build of WordPress that I’m using. My apologies, of course. I’m publishing it now despite slightly outdated numbers. It’s still relevant.
It’s really quite amazing how Alexa stats suddenly become relevant when they stop eliminating one of the world’s most popular browser. The Alexa Toolbar which has until recently only been available for IE, does what many privacy hounds hate – it phones home whenever an internet user views a site and records the visit. Altogether, this data aggregates into an Alexa ranking which PR-junkies tend to like when determining how popular a website is.
The problem is, this has until mere days ago, only been available for Internet Explorer users. Firefox users? Well, apparently they weren’t important enough for Alexa to consider making their ranking system…well, laughably skewed and irrelevant.
Now that theres an Alexa extension for Firefox which has been released (I’m using it on all my computers now) and actually talks to Alexa servers, it’s amazing how different the statistics look.
Here’s a graph of Technosailor’s Alexa rank the past few days. Notice the steep increase as of July 2nd or 3rd.
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HI Aaren
That is a cool tool! Not sure if I needed it but did not know my google page rank before – it appears as a page rank of 1/10.
The Alexa extension for firefox… well I don’t know if it is the plugin that caused the jump from 678000 to 561000. I don’t quite understand why it is relevant but a quick lamens terms explanation would be appreciated? I wish getting technorati to update my site was as easy as this installation. They show I have not posted in 9 days. lol or rather cry. :)
And congrats on your stats jump :)
Vanesica: Alexa ranking is not important at all except in two areas. All the big PR people use it and view relevance of a site based on the Alexa number and some ad companies use Alexa ranking to sell ads to companies. Text Link Ads (aff) is one.
The reason why Alexa ranking has, outside of these circles, been pretty unimportant is that the official Alexa toolbar only works with IE and it is via that toolbar that Alexa numbers are generated – through surfing the web in IE with the toolbar installed. See lots of hoops? I don’t reeally know many people who used the toolbar, do you? ;)
Once the Firefox extension (linked above) was released, the whole segment of the population using Firefox (and it has been growing) suddenly had the Alexa tool at their fingertips. I for one installed it on all my instances of Friefox and judging by my Alexa numbers (and I would guess most sites Alexas numbers), that extension figured into a massive jump in ranking.
HI Aaren
That is a cool tool! Not sure if I needed it but did not know my google page rank before – it appears as a page rank of 1/10.
The Alexa extension for firefox… well I don’t know if it is the plugin that caused the jump from 678000 to 561000. I don’t quite understand why it is relevant but a quick lamens terms explanation would be appreciated? I wish getting technorati to update my site was as easy as this installation. They show I have not posted in 9 days. lol or rather cry. :)
And congrats on your stats jump :)
Thank you for the explanation Aaron. I hope they come out with one for the safari browser too. Cheers!
Vanesica: Alexa ranking is not important at all except in two areas. All the big PR people use it and view relevance of a site based on the Alexa number and some ad companies use Alexa ranking to sell ads to companies. Text Link Ads (aff) is one.
The reason why Alexa ranking has, outside of these circles, been pretty unimportant is that the official Alexa toolbar only works with IE and it is via that toolbar that Alexa numbers are generated – through surfing the web in IE with the toolbar installed. See lots of hoops? I don’t reeally know many people who used the toolbar, do you? ;)
Once the Firefox extension (linked above) was released, the whole segment of the population using Firefox (and it has been growing) suddenly had the Alexa tool at their fingertips. I for one installed it on all my instances of Friefox and judging by my Alexa numbers (and I would guess most sites Alexas numbers), that extension figured into a massive jump in ranking.
Thank you for the explanation Aaron. I hope they come out with one for the safari browser too. Cheers!
Isn’t Alexa also involved with the Internet archive? Or am I mistaken?
Isn’t Alexa also involved with the Internet archive? Or am I mistaken?
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