Since 1996, the web traffic monitoring service owned by Amazon (www.amazon.com) that's widely known as Alexa (www.alexa.com) has apparently been keeping track of what the most popular websites are around the world. It collects hits info on what sites people visit the most. Specifically, people who subscribe to Alexa. And, it seems as though, in a lot of cases, the Alexa database also keeps track of the sites that these same people don't visit very often. Alexa has the inside scoop on just how many websites exist within and outside of that group's radar, and uses this information to rank each web address accordingly, based on tabulating hits automatically submitted by their subscribers. Making that info available to anyone who decides to download the free Alexa Toolbar and install it as part of their web browser.
Up until fairly recently, I really hadn't heard of Alexa at all. The name popped up during an online correspondence that I was having with the membership contact person at the Broadcast Film Critics Association (www.bfca.org). They've been in existence since 1995. The BFCA - according to their site's information, which I'm apt to believe is true - is "the world's largest and most prominent film critics group", and the online home of the famed annual Critic's Choice Awards. They're essentially the Big Kahuna of movie critics associations in North America, if not worldwide. So, of course, I gave joining up with them a shot.
Well, it didn't happen.
Primarily because membership with the BFCA is heavily based upon what the demographic reach is through whatever broadcast medium you make your movie reviews available to the public. Through television, or radio, or the web, for instance. Regarding the web, BFCA apparently uses Alexa in order to verify what your audience numbers are, if you're an online reviewer like me. And, well, my site's numbers weren't too great. According to Alexa, my movie reviews website, Stephen Bourne's Movie Quips (www.geocities.com/iamstephenbourne/moviequips.html), ranked 5,453,186th. That was back in September, when I was attempting to join the BFCA. No where close to registering a blip on the popularity radar screen, unfortunately. The ranking was too low to be considered. And, they didn't seem interested in checking out the ranking of the websites that I regularly supply my reviews content to. No problem. I thanked the nice membership contact person for BFCA's time, and figured I'd try applying again later. Now that I had a better idea of what to care about, towards making that goal of my becoming a Broadcast Film Critics Association member a reality.
While all of that was going on, I actually did give the Alexa Toolbar a try. And, had it running full tilt. For about an hour. Until I realized that, well, I really didn't like the idea that this software was collecting data about my web browsing habits. Let alone storing it all on my computer's fairly wimpy hard drive to be fired off to the number crunchers at Alexa, whenever the software felt like it while I happened to be online. It was also relatively unsettling to discover how much slower my computer behaved while I surfed the web, after I'd installed their toolbar as directed. So, I uninstalled it. Fixing the speed issue fairly easily, thankfully. I later heard from a friend that his computer was loaded up with viruses, and that he was sure the culprit was the Alexa Toolbar that he'd installed and had been running on his web browser for a while. The way I look at it, what's important is that things seem fine with his computer nowadays.
In checking out Alexa after my own cited concerns and problems, what I'd also discovered was that I really didn't need to install their toolbar at all. Alexa has a fairly comprehensive website that actually offers you most of the Alexa Toolbar information already. Just not as automatically. For instance, if I want to find out what my movie reviews website's traffic ranking is right now, all I need to do is go to their site, plug my site's web address into their search engine, and there it is: 5,700,415. Uh-oh. It seems we've sunk in the polls a bit. However, the point is that Alexa can still be a useful source for this sort of info. Even if you don't want to use their toolbar. Even for personal pages like mine.
How am I sure that Alexa's giving me an accurate - albeit ego-crushing - ranking of my otherwise awesome site? Well, they do mention that personal websites are ranked differently. And, if I go to the page where they list other websites that Alexa thinks are linked to mine, I find that all of those sites are actually linked to my web host, Geocities (www.geocities.com). However, by plugging in Geocities' web address, I get a completely different traffic ranking for them: 440. So, I know that this horribly precise-looking 5,700,415 popularity rating is right. By Alexa's calculations, anyways...
Thanks for checking in.
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