Checking out a site's "reach"

[Tonearm]

I'm considering advertising with [bleep], but I want to make sure they're a "far-reaching" site before I pay up. How would you guys recommend I check that out? My Google toolbar hasn't been displaying any Pageranks for a while, but when it was I think it had a 5 so it can't be a total slouch, right? Searching for "[bleep]" on Google, I only found one reference by what seemed like a third party. The site is totally editorial and it seems like a cool concept. They want a flat-fee per year, per product that you want listed. Any advice?

[edited by: rcjordan at 7:12 pm (utc) on Sep. 9, 2003]
[edit reason] no references to specific sites, please [/edit]

[jcoronella]

Alexa can give you a good idea. Not really accurate, but at least an estimate. Search for "site.com" and click on "See Traffic Details". You can then compare that site to a known entity.

Numbers are estimated from sampling, so there is quite a bit of error.

Note: not very good for sites under < 100,000 uniques a month.

[Tonearm]

Thanks a lot. Alexa is a great tool!

[esllou]

alexa is scumware and you should definitely enquire about them on google before even considering installing their toolbar...which is the tool they use to do their scumming.

if you go to the amazon forum:

[forums.prosperotechnologies.com...]

look up alexa and have an eye-opening experience reading through the posts.

in short, the toolbar can be downloaded off your site and your amazon id will always be included whenever that user does a search and buys something. Only the toolbar mysteriously drops your id after about a day and alexa's is put in its place. alexa have known about this issue for over a year and the "fault" has STILL not been fixed.

as one of the posters says on the amazon forum, I wouldn't touch the alexa toolbar with a ten foot pole.

[Lil_Red]

Have you tried uninstalling the Alexa toolbar? It's virtually impossible to get rid.

[Conard]

All traces of Alexa can be removed with a free program named Spy Bot S&D along with all the other spyware you pick up along the way.

[Frank_Rizzo]

I've run the toolbar a few times and then got rid of it. What I notice is, that when the toolbar is loaded and I use mysite as I do normally, about a week later, the traffic level reported by Alexa shows a better score.

I don't think UK users are aware of the toolbar, and as mysite doesn't really apply to US sites I get a low traffic ranking on Alexa but doing the toolbar thing boosts it.

You can get rid of all traces of it easily - just use anti scumware progs such as Adaware.

[esllou]

frank_rizzo

yes, they use only stats from toolbar users. that is where they get their figures from.

[Frank_Rizzo]

So I'm right in thinking that if I use the toolbar for a day or two, and hammer my site, I can increase my traffic stats ;-)

[esllou]

yeah, whatever does it for you.
:-)