Written on July 20th, 2007 at 07:07 pm by Darren Rowse
Alexa Releases Firefox Toolbar
Alexa has finally released it’s long awaited Firefox Toolbar. The little traffic and reach graph/tool that it shows of every site you’re on will be an interesting thing to see as I surf. While I don’t really take much notice of the actual ranking numbers (I have blogs that get a lot more traffic than ProBlogger which don’t rank as highly) I do think that the graphs can be useful to see how a blog or site is trending up or down.
Anyone else downloading it?
30 Responses to “Alexa Releases Firefox Toolbar”
Daniel Scocco
July 20th, 2007 8:15 pm
I prefer the Search Status extension. Pretty much the same job, with more functionalities. Even tough if I am not wrong Alexa has not confirmed that the Search Status extension contributes to their stats.
William Profet :: OneJobTwoSalaries.com
July 20th, 2007 8:30 pm
Cool. But due to the many toolbars and plugin-bars installed, my 1280×1024 screen will achieve 800×600 very soon! :))))
Anyway, thank you for the link!
MillionDollarJourney.com
July 20th, 2007 8:33 pm
I’ve been using it for the past 4 days now and it seems to be working properly. According to the FF Alexa Toolbar, Problogger has an Alexa Ranking of 2635!
Eve
July 20th, 2007 9:04 pm
It’s about time they made one for firefox! But I, like Daniel, am hooked on the Search Status Extension now. :-)
B.Durant
July 20th, 2007 9:21 pm
Oh goodie another toy for me to play with a waste innumerable hours on.
On a side-note I was under the impression that most of the blogging community doesn’t care for Alexa rankings? Or is it more like Windows vs Linux in that many just like Linux to be “cool” and don’t really appreciate it?
Ali
July 20th, 2007 9:29 pm
I prefer the Search Status plugin too, as mentioned by Daniel.
I somehow don’t trust Alexa when they say they won’t profile me. They’re in the business of profiling, since being a part of Amazon. I can’t visit Amazon without them telling me how to spend my money. It’s annoying.
Matt Jones
July 20th, 2007 9:48 pm
I don’t get this… I’ve been using the alexa Toolbar on Firefox for months,… The only difference is my Firefox is on a Mac but that still makes no sense :s
Cameron
July 20th, 2007 10:08 pm
One thing you have to take into account is for certain type of websites, the IE users outweigh the Firefox users. Since, Alexa’s data so far only rely from their IE toolbar, it obviously make them unreliable in certain cases. For example, a really tech savvy sites often have a bigger Firefox user base, therefore Alexa will show these sites as having less traffic even tho in reality it might be much more. I know this is true, because I have several sites, some with 60-70% of the users using Firefox.
With the release of this addon, if an amount of people start using this on firefox relative to IE, statistically speaking, Alexa’s information would become much more reliable, because the invisible whole in which they weren’t able to see before, can be seen now.
Cameron
July 20th, 2007 10:09 pm
I meant to say “Firefox users outweigh the IE users”.
Reginald
July 20th, 2007 10:16 pm
I agree with Ali and Daniel, I much prefer the SearchStatus extension from Quirk as it has so much more than just Alexa. I can also confirm that I have asked them and it does report back to Alexa.
Bush Mackel
July 20th, 2007 10:21 pm
Probably won’t be downloading it as I spend too much time worrying about Alexa rank these days as it is. (#):)
Technobuzz.net
July 20th, 2007 10:48 pm
This One is the Best Toolbar
http://www.technobuzz.net/sparky-the-alexa-toolbar-for-firefox/
TextAdSearch
July 20th, 2007 10:49 pm
About time. I will still keep my current Alexa toolbar plug-in (that’s right there has been a third party one available for ages) too see if works as well.
Chase Roper
July 20th, 2007 11:07 pm
I downloaded this yesterday when I read the announcement on the Alexa blog. So far it seems to just be a novelty thing. The new related links menu is kind of fun though. Maybe I’ll like the whole a lot more once my blog actually show up on the graph.
Izzy
July 20th, 2007 11:20 pm
From what I’ve gleaned on Alexa’s site (and I could have it totally wrong) they calculate your Alexa rankings by tracking the internet wanderings of people who have the Alexa toolbar installed. I just don’t understand how that could be accurate so I haven’t downloaded it yet.
David Bradley Blogging Tips
July 20th, 2007 11:21 pm
We might not care for Alexa, and there are so many sites gaming it that it’s not the most valid of metrics, but, some ad systems use it to rank your site and so decide how much they’re going to pay you, always worth trying to rank well in everyone’s book I’d say
db
The Reviewer
July 21st, 2007 12:18 am
I have search status, but I will check this one out. I am about to break 200,000 probably this week.
Fatgadget
July 21st, 2007 1:14 am
This is great news.
Hopefully this will help my Alexa ranking, as only 20% of my readers use IE, 50% use Firefox, 20% Safari, and 10% various other browsers.
J.D.
July 21st, 2007 1:29 am
I downloaded it AND installed it.
Will it help anything related to my blog? Maybe. About 80 percent of my readers use Internet Explorer, and 18 percent uses Firefox. Every little bit counts.
Steven Bradley
July 21st, 2007 2:56 am
One thing you might want to do before installing is read the EULA. I went to install the toolbar a few days ago and it sounded to me like Alexa was going to grab a lot more information about me than I wanted them to.
They obviously need to grab some info in order to be able to do what they do, but it seemed like they were going above and beyond what they needed to collect.
I might have read things wrong or been feeling a bit more paranoid than usual on that particular day, but the policy struck me as collecting much more than necessary.
AJ Vaynerchuk
July 21st, 2007 2:57 am
Interesting news. I installed the toolbar because when it comes to selling advertisements on some of my websites, Alexa Ranking still plays a role (for some unapparent reason).
I covered this story on my blog and made a top 10 list as to why the new Alexa Toolbar for Firefox matters to webmasters. Darren, linked to your point about the nifty little graph in the lower right corner. Check it out here: http://www.ajvaynerchuk.com/articles/alexa-toolbar-released-for-firefox.php
Should be interesting to see how everyone’s Alexa Rankings changed over the next few months.
Chris
July 21st, 2007 3:53 am
I just downloaded it! Thanks for the news.
Tom
July 21st, 2007 5:49 am
I’ve already been a firefox user for a year now and love it! This toolbar seems really handy in my opinion.
JoLynn Braley
July 21st, 2007 1:46 pm
I’ve also been using the search status extension for a couple of months now…I like it. And, like Reginald wrote (comment #10), I also read that the ss ext. reports back to Alexa, so that anyone using it who visits your site will help your Alexa ranking.
Patrix
July 22nd, 2007 6:58 am
Unfortunately, the extension for Firefox is not compatible with the latest update.
Hasan Hadi
July 22nd, 2007 8:12 am
Cheers mate, wouldn’t have realised otherwise!
—–
http://hahauk.com
ciken
July 22nd, 2007 5:16 pm
i already download the toolbar..very useful tool..thanks
Andrew
July 23rd, 2007 1:55 pm
I just downloaded it and look forward to using it.
Cheers!
Kent
July 24th, 2007 8:20 pm
Finally they released it… I will make a post about it on my blog.
Izabael DaJinn
July 28th, 2007 9:14 am
I always thought Alexa would go away, but it seems more popular now than ever for better or for worse. At least running it on Firefox doesn’t seem so bad.
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