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I'm getting small, but consistent traffic from Alexa and Thunderstone. Thunderstone traffic is very small, but Alexa refers a few daily, just enough to pique my interest.
Using MetaEureka, there is a resource link titled "Alexa Info" under returns for my domain. This particular domain shows "Traffic : 2,250,972" -so, OK, now my interest is a little more keen.
Anyone have any info on how Alexa (or Thunderstone) decides to spider a site?
Alexa is a subsidiary of Amazon and very independant from them. They (http://www.alexa.com) allows you to download a browser plug in which sends information back to their servers about what sites you're on.
They use this data in several ways...
-- Give Alexa Plug in users a list of related sites. This is derived from users surfing habits.
-- "Whats related" feature in Netscape and MSIE
-- AlexaResearch.Com provides some really good reports on how sites are ranked etc
I've personally found it very useful when searching for obscure information. Visit a site .. then see what other sites users have surfed too, check the traffic of that site, check to see if other alexa users have reviewed it, check contact information etc.
I know it sounds like an alexa commercial. I'm a happy alexa user.
The crawler you see visiting your site ia_archiver does (they claim) lexical analysis to see if your content is related to content on other sites. They spider your site after a few alexa users have visited your site. Your sites content is also archived with a non profit organisation .. (http://www.archive.org) which maintains terabytes of internet archives. Take a look at [alexa.com...] for more information.
