There are numerous tools available on the Internet to assist
online businesses. A valuable tool that you should use is the
Alexa Toolbar. Even better, this tool is free.
Alexa Toolbar
Founded in April 1996, Alexa.com was designed to provide an
interactive web navigation system. The most impressive part of
the platform, now owned by Amazon.com, is the free Alexa Toolbar.
First released in 1997, the Alexa Toolbar is known as the ?B.S.?
detector for Internet sites. With over 10 million users, the
toolbar tracks how people use the Internet and turns this
information into ranking statistics for each site on the
Internet. For instance, Yahoo is ranked as the number one most
visited site on the Internet.
So how do you use this tool? First, you download the Alexa
Toolbar as follows:
1. Go to Alexa.com.
2. Click ?Download Alexa Toolbar? at the top of the page.
3. Click ?Install? on the next page.
Reload the page you are viewing and the toolbar will appear
across the top of your browser. The tool provides you with
valuable information regarding any site you are looking at,
including your own. It tells you the traffic ranking of the site
compared to all sites on the Internet. The tool also provides
you specific traffic information for the site and lays out sites
that are similar to the one on your screen. Instead of making
baseless assumptions regarding how ?good? a site is or whether
it is successful, you can use the Alexa statistics to get a
better idea. If any company approaches you claiming they have a
lot of traffic, you can just pull up their site and review the
Alexa statistics. This allows you to verify who is receiving a
significant amount of traffic and who is feeding you a line of
?B.S.?
Let?s look at Google.com using the Alexa toolbar. Load Google on
to your browser and click the #3 number in the toolbar. The
Alexa Toolbar information for google shows:
1. The site is the 3rd most popular site on the Internet. [Yahoo
is No. 1.]
2. The site takes .8 seconds to load, which is very fast.
Next, click the ?see traffic details? link on the page to dive
into the site statistics:
The site shows consistent traffic through the year, maintaining
a number 3 position. 214,00 out of every million surfers visit
the site, which is an excellent ?reach? rating. Each visitor
views approximately 5.4 pages on the site, which means that
users are working there way into the internal pages of the site.
This is always good news for a site.
As you can see, using the Alexa Toolbar system can provide you
with specific information regarding web sites. The next time you
are contacted by someone claiming they have millions of hits or
are considering advertising on a site, you can use the Alexa
toolbar to get an objective view of the site.
About the author:
Halstatt Pires is with Marketing
Titan- an Internet marketing and advertising
company comprised of a search engine optimization specialist
providing meta tag optimization services and Internet marketing
consultant providing internet marketing solutions through
integrated design and programming services.
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