The Alexa Toolbar* is the industry standard utility for showing the ranks of every web site in the world.

Since there are nearly 70 million web sites and hundreds of millions of people surfind the web, it's not possible to track every web site or every person surfing the web. Just like TV & Radio ratings, what they do is take a sample group of people, and keep track of the sites they visit. In Alexa's case, there are about 10 million people who use their toolbar, so they use this group to calculate their statistics.

The only way to increase your rank is to increase the number of visitors to your site THAT USE THE ALEXA TOOLBAR. In other words, if you have a million visitors each day, and none of them use the Alexa Toolbar, then you would have a very poor ranking. On the other hand, if a large number of your visitors use the toolbar your rank will improve dramatically.

You can start by using the toolbar yourself. If nothing else, whenever you visit your own site while using the toolbar, you are insuring you are part of your own recorded traffic score. Next, you will want to encourage as many of your visitors as possible to sign up and use it too. I'm not ashamed to say, that's why I encourage our visitors to use it.

One thing to keep in mind is that since rankings are of interest to Webmasters, it stands to reason that a large number of Webmasters have the toolbar. This means that a lot of high ranking sites in Web/IT categories rank potentially higher than they should because a larger percentage of their visitors have the toolbar (because they are Webmasters too).

That said, there are benefits to using the toolbar, so I'd most likely still use it. In my case, whenever I visit a web site, I frequently glance at the Alexa Ranking on the top of my browser to see what their rank is. Generally speaking, when you visit a good score, it gives you an idea of the site's popularity. As an added bonus, it also adds a decent pop-up blocker and a series of "related links" to the top of your browser, which often are exactly what you were looking for... but didn't know it.

It's FREE.

Amazon's Alexa Toolbar is the subject of quite a bit of debate on the subject of "Spyware". Some anti-spyware programs consider the Alexa Toolbar as a form of Spyware because when you install the toolbar, it keeps track of the web sites you visit and sends those statistics back to Amazon.

While it is true the tool does send these statistics, the tool does not attempt to identify the user in any way. The statistics they collect are only used to calculate the total number of visitors who visit a particular web site.

By suggesting other links for your website, that causes them also to be considered related links to other websites. To suggest related links for your own website, go to...

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/editor?type=rl&url=[YourURLhere]

To update the thumbnail that Alexa has for your site, just add your domain to the end of this URL:

http://thumbnails.alexa.com/update_thumbnail?url=[YourURLhere]

Alexa typically allows you to view 4 different default date spans: ... but by manipulating the URL directly, you can modify that to whatever you want, down to 2 days or all the way up to 4 years.

To do this, simply go to the graph you want to see using one of Alexa's default time spans, and then modify the part of the URL that looks like this...

traffic_details?&range=3m
In this range parameter, "d" = day, "m" = month and "y" = year.

Replacing "&range=3m" with "&range=8d" will cause the graph to span for 8 days.

Alexa's directory is powered by the Open Directory Project.

To be included in the directory, go to http://www.dmoz.org/ and submit your site. A human editor will review your site and place it in the proper category.

Once that's done, it will automatically be picked up by Alexa.

Alexa offers two help pages to assist you in removing the toolbar:
* http://pages.alexa.com/exec/faqsidos/help/index.html?index=7
* http://pages.alexa.com/exec/faqsidos/help/index.html?index=38

... but many people find it necessary to resort to a spyware removal tool that has Alexa-removal capabilities. eg: http://hop.clickbank.net/?auctions20/noadware

To make your own toolbar, go here...
http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/associatetoolbar.html

Go here...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aws/sdk/103-0004624-0694231?s=AlexaWebInfoService&v=1-0

You can get several things from Alexa as an RSS feed, such as:
* Movers and Shakers
* Top 500 Sites
* Top 100 English Sites
* ... and more.
To sign up for an RSS feed, go here...
http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/rss_feeds.html

Alexa allows you to place code on your website which will display a real-time ranking of your website for visitors. To get the code specific for your website, go here...

http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup

Alexa allows you to modify the data on your listing.

To modify basic contact information, etc., contact them via this link...
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/contact_info

For more involved changes, you'll need to contact them directly at...
http://pages.alexa.com/company/contact.html

Click Here to get the latest toolbar

Alexa Toolbar