Alexa Toolbar

[neb1211]

As of late, I have been having a really hard time getting companies to send Maximum CPU products to review and every company I ask to sponsor an upcomming contest is refuses.  There are a few reasons for this but the main reason is that Maximum CPU does not have a high enough Alexa rating.  If you ask me, it is pretty dumb to base decisions regarding review samples on the Alexa rating, since it only tracks visits to a site if the visitor is running the Alexa Toolbar w/ IE.  I currently have the Alexa Toolbar installed on a few of my computers and have for some time but I alone am not enough to raise Maximum CPU's Alexa rating.  For those of you that use Firefox or another browser on a regular basis, I would greatly appriciated if you would install the Alexa toolbar and use IE to browse this site.  

Alexa Toolbar: http://download.alexa.com/index.cgi?p=Dest_W_b_40_T1
Maximum CPU Alexa Rating: http://info.alexa.com/data/details?p=TBChr....maximumcpu.net

[pvr02]

The rating doesn't increase for just using IE.  Do you have to use that toolbar?

Does the toolbar do anything else (add spyware, etc...)

[acemaverick1381]

Yes, Alexa toolbar is associated with spyware.

Alexa aggregates and analyzes the information it collects to improve its service and to prepare reports about aggregate web usage and shopping habits.

http://www.spyany.com/program/article_ad_r...xa_ToolBar.html

Its not exactly spyware or adware, but its very borderline. I guess it all depends on how much security you want, and if the quote above bothers you.
 

[neb1211]

Yeah it is borderline spyware so that is why I recommended installing it only if you use firefox or another alternative browser.  I wouldn't expect any of you to install it if you used IE as your main browser.

[Limp_Trizkit]

I wouldn't install Alexa or any ad/spyware if my life depended on it.

I like clean machines.....     Clean is good.  (Except around my desk - I like it a mess......  Don't ask....)  

[pvr02]

Does it count everytime you go to the site or only once per IP?

[neb1211]

Alexa's traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period. A site's ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and pageviews. Reach is determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day. Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single pageview. The site with the highest combination of users and pageviews is ranked #1.

Alexa's traffic rankings are for top level domains only (e.g. domain.com). We do not provide seperate rankings for subpages within a domain (e.g. www.domain.com/subpage.html) or subdomains (e.g. subdomain.domain.com) unless we are able to automatically identify them as personal home pages, like those hosted on Geocities and Tripod. If a site is identified as a personal home page, its traffic ranking will have an asterisk (*) next to it: Personal Page Avg. Traffic Rank: 3,456*. Personal pages are ranked on the same scale as a regular domain, so a personal page ranked 3,456* is the 3,456th most popular page among Alexa users.

http://pages.alexa.com/exec/faqsidos/help/index.html?index=1