What is Alexa Toolbar and how can it be used?

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Website traffic data – essential for the digital ecosystem

If you work in the world of Online Advertising you have probably heard about a toolbar called the Alexa Toolbar Alexa is a “Web Information Company” that collects data by utilizing cookies from users who surf the web. It collects data about websites such as reach, popularity, geography, language and other demographics which is then graphically represented in an easy to see format.

Alexa Toolbar by Alexa
www.Alexa.com

The data displayed

This tool is essential for any entry level employee who is working for any kind of online advertising or marketing company. The tool can be used to vet websites to see which ones have prime real estate to media buy on and what is popular on the Web right now.

My favorite part of the toolbar is a ticker that links the top articles that are currently trending on the web. It eliminates the need to constantly check news sources for information because Alexa will inject the news stream into your browser. Aside from this, Alexa also shows the top keywords that are trending on the web for a quick snapshot of what is popular.





If you are owning and operating a website, this toolbar is essential so you can see how you rank against your competitors. Alexa ranks websites based on both United States as well as international traffic and you can even search specific vertical categories to narrow down the rankings of particular websites.

Overall the Alexa Toolbar is a great asset to have if you are working within the matrix of the internet every day and it not intrusive at all. Check it out for yourself.

Alexa Toolbar Example:

Alexa Toolbar Example Data

Site: Forbes.com

Alexa Traffic Rank: 173. This means that the site is ranked 173 in traffic ranking compared to every website that alexa tracks.

Rank is US: Forbes is the 63rd most popular website in the united states.

Sites Linking In: 180,693 websites have outbound links to Forbes.

Wayback Machine: Alexa is able to show you what the layout of the website looked in the past with screenshots.

Related Links: Other websites that have similar content to Forbes.

Load Time: Average. 54% of sites load faster then forbes.com

Other Resources

A similar website to Alexa is Similarweb which provides the same kinds of insights to Alexa, but represents the data in a visually stunning way. Check out this tool with our article below.

SimilarWeb_Logo
SimilarWeb, the Ultimate Discovery Tool