The Alexa toolbar, and why it's so cool

If you've visited Alexa recently you've probably noticed the ads for the free Alexa toolbar. You also might have even wondered why you should bother downloading and installing it. After all, do you really need another toolbar? Hopefully I can convince you that the answer is yes, and for a variety of reasons why.

The Alexa toolbar for Internet Explorer gives you quick and easy access to considerable amount of metadata about the website you are currently visiting. If you click on the down arrow next to the "info" button you will get a synopsis of of site's contact information, traffic rank, and other sites stats. If you click on the info button itself, you will see the site information page at alexa.com for the website. This is nice if you find a new site that looks interesting, and you want to quickly see how popular it is and how long it has been around (especially if you are thinking about giving them your credit card number). Next to the info button is the site's rank, along with an icon indicating the recent trend (a green up arrow indicates that the site is getting more popular while a red down arrow indicates fewer visitors recently). Next on the toolbar is a list of related links, with are other websites popular among the users of the site you are currently visiting. Lastly, if you type something into the search box you will see results from the Alexa Site Finder which I blogged about previously. All of this together makes the Alexa toolbar a fantastic way to find new websites about the things you are interested in.

There is also an Alexa Toolbar for Firefox nicknamed "Sparky." The nickname comes from the traffic data "sparkline" that the toolbar places in the Firefox status bar. There is no vertical scale given for the sparklines, they exist mainly to give you a quick visual of how the site's Alexa traffic rank has changed over the past few months. Next to the sparkline is the current Alexa traffic rank, along with a bar to give a visual of the site's popularity. You also have access to Alexa's list of related sites, although these available through the "Related Links" drop down menu at the top of the browser.

So, this is all great stuff if you want to know how popular a site is or are constantly looking for new sites to visit, but what if that's not you? Well, there's yet another reason to install the Alexa toolbar. It's no secret that Alexa ranks websites, and one of the ways we know which sites are popular and which are not is by looking and highly anonymized toolbar usage. Yep, that's right, when you surf the web with your Alexa toolbar you are casting votes for which sites you like. It's just like being a Nielsen Family, although instead of TV ratings you are helping rank websites. You are also contributing to the related links you see in your toolbar and on alexa.com, and helping other users of the site you are visiting find things they may be interested in as well. It's simple, too. The more times you visit a site and the more pages you view while there, the more important you are saying the site is. Pretty cool, huh? There's no need to be a super influential blogger, have a million followers on twitter, or spend hours digging things to be heard. All you need to do is surf the web and Alexa does the rest.

So what about spyware? As an engineer here at Alexa, I occasionally get asked if Alexa is spyware or not. Does the Alexa toolbar collect your votes about which websites are the best on the Internet? Yes, but only if you "opt in" and install it. And we try to be very up front about the fact that you are sending us anonymous information to help us measure the popularity of websites. The Alexa toolbar contains no advertising, and does not profile or target you in any way. So when I surf with an Alexa toolbar installed, I get information about sites I'm on as well as suggestions for other sites to visit, and I'm voting for the sites I visit the most, that's it. It's pretty sweet if you ask me.