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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.

Picture 3-1

Anyone else downloading it?

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. 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.

  2. 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!

  3. 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!

  4. It’s about time they made one for firefox! But I, like Daniel, am hooked on the Search Status Extension now. :-)

  5. 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?

  6. 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.

  7. 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

  8. 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.

  9. Cameron says: 07/20/2007 at 10:09 pm

    I meant to say “Firefox users outweigh the IE users”.

  10. Reginald says: 07/20/2007 at 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.

  11. Probably won’t be downloading it as I spend too much time worrying about Alexa rank these days as it is. (#):)

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

  14. 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.

  15. 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

  16. I have search status, but I will check this one out. I am about to break 200,000 probably this week.

  17. 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.

  18. 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.

  19. 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.

  20. 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.

  21. I just downloaded it! Thanks for the news.

  22. I’ve already been a firefox user for a year now and love it! This toolbar seems really handy in my opinion.

  23. 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.

  24. Unfortunately, the extension for Firefox is not compatible with the latest update.

  25. Cheers mate, wouldn’t have realised otherwise!
    —–
    http://hahauk.com

  26. i already download the toolbar..very useful tool..thanks

  27. I just downloaded it and look forward to using it.
    Cheers!

  28. Finally they released it… I will make a post about it on my blog.

  29. 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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