The Other Search Engines

**bonjo99** · 04-18-2007, 11:36 PM

Need advice/help:

- To do this, would I simply disallow everyone that had case-insensitive "alexa toolbar" in the user-agent of their browser?
- Is the user-agent sent even when the Alexa Toolbar is turned off?
- Is there any other information that's helpful in identifying an Alexa Toolbar user?

- Has anyone been able to do this successfully?

Thanks all.

**ADAM Web Design** · 04-19-2007, 12:53 AM

I'm not sure what disallowing an Alexa toolbar user is meant to accomplish or why you'd want to. Assuming they're not your buddies or about 49 proxy machines you set up just to spike your ranking (and clearly you aren't), let 'em run what they want on their browser as long as they're visiting your site.

Man, most people would kill to have more users and you're trying to turn 'em away!

**bonjo99** · 04-19-2007, 01:23 AM

My Alexa ranking has been declining over the past five years. This isn't due to my visitor numbers decreasing (quite the opposite, actually), but less of my visitors using Alexa. I have a niche audience and this is starting to annoy me, especially since it's impacting my advertising sales.

I emailed Alexa and asked them to remove my website, but they said that they don't/can't do that.

Fine.

So, I'm going to choose to selectively block Alexa users from my website so that there are no Alexa stats to speak of. That should get rid of the inaccurate statistics system that is Alexa.

**ADAM Web Design** · 02:55 AM

Okay...there are a few things wrong with that statement.

First off, Alexa cannot index any content that you explicitly disallow them to (nor can any site, legally). Fortunately, there's a perfectly legitimate way to block the Alexa bot (from http://www.alexa.com/site/help/webma...&qterm=&p=Dest) :

Quote:

To prevent ia_archiver from visiting (while allowing all others), your robots.txt file should look like this:

User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

This will keep the Alexa bot from crawling your website and will force them to remove it. I don't know if that will solve the issue of the flawed Alexa ranking (I suspect it will), but it will at least force them to stop crawling your site.

However, I don't think this will solve your greater issue in this case (advertising sales). If your advertisers are buying less ad space based on your Alexa traffic now, what are they going to do when they don't see any Alexa traffic at all?

Personally, I'd suggest looking for some new advertisers that either understand how skewed Alexa is, will be prepared to accept that Alexa is skewed as an explanation, or that don't even know what Alexa is in the first place. The more advertisers you have to choose from, the higher you can set the price bar. In other words, find other ways to market your sites and expand your advertiser base. If you can do that, you can tell the idiots who believe that Alexa is the be-all and end-all of ranking to stop reproducing for the good of all mankind. And won't that feel just special?

**ForrestCroce** · 04-19-2007, 04:44 AM

If they have old data on the site in their index already, will banning their spider really make them delist a site? Wouldn't they just go with the stale info they have?

**bonjo99** · 10:42 AM

I've had

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

on my site for over 10 years now. Believe me: it doesn't stop Alexa from showing statistics for your website.

Anyway, like I said, my website is 10 years old and has a very strong niche visitor-base. So, if it dropped off the face of Alexa, advertisers would recognize that there was something wrong with Alexa's statistics for my website - and not that my website was not getting any visitors.

As far as old data is concerned, I have a feeling that that'll persist. But, as long as I can prevent new statistical data from being produced, this might be the way to go.

**Republikin** · 04-19-2007, 10:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bonjo99

I've had

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

on my site for over 10 years now. Believe me: it doesn't stop Alexa from showing statistics for your website.

Anyway, my website is 10 years old and has a very strong niche visitor-base. So, if it dropped off the face of Alexa, advertisers would recognize that there was something wrong with Alexa's statistics for my website - and not that my website was not getting any visitors.

As far as old data is concerned, I have a feeling that that'll persist. But, as long as I can prevent new statistical data from being produced, this might be the way to go.

Thats not good, that disallows all robots such as google, slurp and msn.

**bonjo99** · 04-19-2007, 10:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Republikin

Thats not good, that disallows all robots such as google, slurp and msn.

(I have selective allows for some search engines; Alexa isn't one of them.)

**ADAM Web Design** · 04-19-2007, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

If they have old data on the site in their index already, will banning their spider really make them delist a site? Wouldn't they just go with the stale info they have?

I wasn't sure, to be totally honest with you. I've never bothered blocking Alexa myself, since there isn't anything good that can come from it. That's why I suggested it.

Anyway...you sound like you're caught between a rock and a hard place, bonjo. If you cut out the Alexa toolbar users, you cut out users that in some cases are legitimate ones and will probably screw up the situation worse than it already is. If you don't...well...you're still stuck.

At any rate, telling users to go away just because they have a stupid toolbar isn't the answer. Again, I'd suggest finding a greater number of, and more intelligent, advertisers.

**MrBrownThumb** · 04-19-2007, 05:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

Man, most people would kill to have more users and you're trying to turn 'em away!

Lately I've been wondering why I don't see any visit exchange request for people using the Alexa Toolbar like you see with link swaps or people wanting to swap stumbles and diggs.

Is there something in the tool bar that makes it less usable for swapping?

**bonjo99** · 03:03 PM

Meh.

This idea would work if everyone started doing it - since that would force Alexa to its knees.

Anyway, I sent an email to Alexa requesting that they remove my website from their pages. I wanted to try this before resorting to blocking Alexa users.

Alexa responded by saying they can't do that - they can only remove my website information, not the statistics gathered by the toolbar.

Is Alexa legally allowed to keep my website on their pages??? Search engines have an opt-out feature; it's surprising to see that Alexa doesn't...

**ADAM Web Design** · 04-20-2007, 05:39 PM

Not necessarily, bonjo. It's a good thought, but consider that Alexa is one of the most unpopular "metrics" on the Internet, and justifiably so due to the gross inaccuracy and webmaster skew associated with the use of the toolbar.

As a result, Alexa has to do anything it possibly can to ensure accuracy and overcome this obstacle. That means they have to include every site it possibly can in its traffic rankings in order to even stand a chance at making that happen.

Unfortunately for you, that apparently means they're gonna measure you. It's disgusting, but it's going to happen.

The only other thing that you might be able to do is block any Alexa IPs and ranges vs. Alexa user IPs and ranges. That's a real longshot, though.

MrBrownThumb: this is one of the reasons why you don't see Alexa "swapping"...the only thing that can be gained is a higher rank from an inaccurate measure of ranking.

**Gracia** · 04-25-2007, 07:00 AM

Try going to the discussions for Robots.txt. I saw some information in there about this and although I am new to this website I have already found some excellent areas to learn from. I have also found this excellent link that was provided by a moderator that outlines a lot of other useful information. Good luck! Let me know how it goes so I can do the same thing! I am interested in preventing this same problem on my websites. Thanks.

**Michel Samuel** · 01:52 PM

I have the same problem with Alexa.

They record their traffic via the number of users that have the toolbar installed and visit your site. Needless to say that in the real world and not vitural. Anyone that recorded traffic of people visiting a place of business and then using that information for profit...

Well they would be sued pretty darn fast.
And my last letter to them was to inform them I would be contacting my attorney if they do not clean their act up.

My site is in a "ahem" very political industry. I am not concerned about the volume of visitors as to what particular group visits my site. Since all information on my site is confidential and private, I disallow ALL search bots.

Unfortunatly any and all information about my site can and will be used against my business. This includes 3rd party, non-authorized, record keeping of my traffic.

So personally I too would like to know how to block their tool bar users.
-------
Out of curiosity

Would this work in your .htaccess file ?

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} alexa\ toolbar
RewriteRule .* - [F]