Alexa Toolbar Advice, Please

[AlexDP]

Hi,

Does anyone here promote the Alexa toolbar? If so would you recommend it?

And how does it work? I understand the Amazon bit, where my affiliate ID is added to the button on the toolbar and in search results but what about the Google search results? How do I generate money from those? Also, would it only work for US people and not anywhere else, e.g. UK?

Sorry, lots of questions. Hope you will be able to help me. Many thanks,

Alex

[deilenberger]

Originally Posted by AlexDP

Hi,

Does anyone here promote the Alexa toolbar? If so would you recommend it?

And how does it work? I understand the Amazon bit, where my affiliate ID is added to the button on the toolbar and in search results but what about the Google search results? How do I generate money from those? Also, would it only work for US people and not anywhere else, e.g. UK?

Sorry, lots of questions. Hope you will be able to help me. Many thanks,

Alex

I believe the Alexia toolbar is widely known as a spyware toolbar. I have removed it (use SPYBOT) on any machines I've found it on.

DJE

[big_harry]

I believe the Alexia toolbar is widely known as a spyware toolbar. I have removed it (use SPYBOT) on any machines I've found it on.

I ask this question, What exactly does Alexa do that you consider is spyware, and what harm does it do, and what good does the toolbar offer in return?

In my opinion giving these answers would be useful in answering the query at hand. Your statement seems to offer nothing in that regard, which is unfortunate because I had the same query and I am still looking for useful information.

[bruwmac]

I don't believe it does any harm.

I find it useful when looking at my sites, and others, in regard to traffic trends.

For instance, deilenberger has a Traffic Rank of 526,707 and shows a loss of traffic over the past three months.

:(

Download Alexa HERE

[greenjedi]

I used to promote the toolbar. However, Spybot identifies it as Spyware - which means there's a chance your visitors may associate you with Spyware. I agree that the toolbar provides some great functionality, but the risk is too great.

[kingdonk]

Originally Posted by AlexDP

Hi,

Does anyone here promote the Alexa toolbar? If so would you recommend it?

And how does it work? I understand the Amazon bit, where my affiliate ID is added to the button on the toolbar and in search results but what about the Google search results? How do I generate money from those? Also, would it only work for US people and not anywhere else, e.g. UK?
Alex

I have used the Alexa toolbar for some time and have found, if you are a webmaster who owns your own web site, or market them for for others, using the Alexa toolbar will make your Alexa rankings go up if you visit your site's a few times a day.
It is a very usefull toolbar, but trying to promote it with your affiliate id is not that easy as you can see from some other comments on this post.
If people think its spyware, then they wont try it, even thou they dont think about the features of the toolbar, like it reports back to Alexa with websites you visit to give page rankings and give you alternatvie information about the site your on and other simular web sites (which is the best thing since searching and forums).
If you are aiming it at newbies then they will go for it, but do not purchase things on the internet for some time, so the actual amount of people that will download the alexa toolbar and purchase things (when using the toolbar) is not much so you will not actualy make much if anything, but then its like most affiliate programs on the internet.
There is no way for you to make money with the Google Searches. An the toolbar works great worldwide, wether you are based in the UK or USA.
One problem about the toolbar is if you are a serious internet user, and have miltiple internet explore pages open, it will suck up all your virtual memory. It can make pages load slower and make other problems for you, when on the internet.
Hope this helps some one out there.

Regards
Andrew

[bizgen]

When I first came across the Alexa toolbar it was through a Trafficology newsletter. In principal the concept bhind the toolbar is a good one.

It has a pop-up blocker built in, allows you to see the most common sites visited by visitors to the site you are currently viewing in your browser, gives a traffic rating, and allows webmasters to enter contact information for their websites for other Alexa toolbar users. There is also a button which will take users to Amazon which, if you are promoting the toolbar, you can link to your Amazon affiliate id (assuming you are signed up with them.)

All sounds good so far.

Unfortunately in practice it doesn't work quite so well. The traffic rating does not appear to be very accurate. I have looked at how they calculate it and compared that to many of my sites and others I work with and rarely do the figures come out as I expect. Very few webmasters bother to fill out the contact information for their sites. If you do make the effort it takes weeks for it to be put on and I have noticed on a couple of occasions that the wrong contact information has been added. To make things worse if you go to Alex itself to view additional information about the site you will often find that the picture, description and contact details relate to an entirely different site, which probably explains the above problems.

The only useful thing I have found with it is being able tosee at a glance what other sites visitors go to, but when you blanace this with the above problems along with the fact that it seems to be regarded as spyware now, I would steer well clear and save your browser space for more useful toolbars.

Oh and one final point in answer to the Amazon US/UK question. To gain commission from Amazon UK you have to sign up to the .co.uk affiliate scheme, and to gain commission from the US you have to sign up to the .com scheme. However, unless they have released a UK version since I downloaded it, the Alexa toolbar only directs traffic to the .com.

I hope this answers some of your questions.

[Peter Holland]

I use the toolbar since I started webbuilding, and the weird thing is my traffic is raising on all the sites so I like this spybar and I keep promoting it on my sites.
And because its already build in the internet explorer browser, I think it doesnt harm.

[TrafficProducer]

Alexa toolbar.

I use Google Tool bar, mainly to stop Pop-ups.

I do promote the Alexa toolbar, it is basically a Ranking tool see:- http://www.downloads.ukprofessionals.com (Website Review/Ratings section for more)

Users have a choice of Tool Bars they may use, ( they are more):-

http://www.downloads.ukprofessionals..._toolbars.html

[ldylion214]

I use to really appreciate it. I like looking at my traffic rankings and such, but then I started seeing it as a problem. I had some trojan problems and when I started deleting files and such, Alexa went with them. My spyware remover took it right out. I don't use it anymore.

[rocos]

I never use it, because I have installed Google toolbar. But I think it is useful for us webmasters.

[greenjedi]

The idea of the functionality of the toolbar is great for webmasters/webmistresses. It gives us quick access to stats, and an option to generate revenue via Amazon.com along with some other pros.

One of the problems is that I have also found the stats to be inaccurate. The other main problem is since Spybot identifies it as Spyware we risk customers/visitors identifying us as Spyware perpetrators.

[Jason - SmartDraw.com]

Interesting posts. I was not aware of the potential spyware association. If that's true then it certainly is a risk.

On the otherhand, I've found the toolbar to be particularly effective. I use it in conjunction with the Google toolbar, mostly to get a "second opinion" on traffic data.

It's also very nice for finding webmasters' contact information, which is crucial for an Affiliate Manager such as myself.

Oh yeah, and the pop-up blocker's nice as well. ;)

Hope this helps!

[canistotasoftware]

If you are using the toolbar to gauge the ranking of your web site you are getting a false sense of what your rankings actually are. Alexa can only gauge visits based on vistors to your site that actually have the toolbar installed and if you have it and visit your site often your rankings will be inflated greatly. I had the toolbar installed and would visit one of my sites often while I was building the site and even though I was getting maybe 20-30 unique visitors a day Alexa said my sites ranking was in the 200,000 range. Either the traffic on the internet had dropped significantly or Alexa was totally off.

[cbp]

Alexa rankings are total crap, meaningless and a waste of time - when will people get the message?

See these threads:
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=17660
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=22579

CBP

[canistotasoftware]

cbp,

I could not agree more! Alexa only wants you to have the toolbar so they can get more ranking information to sell to their big time marketing clients. The more toolbars installed the more they can try and parade the so-called accuracy of their rankings