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About: | ALEXACOM | WWWAlexa |
Web Site Rankings | www.alexa.cm
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ALEXACOM
Alexa Internet, Inc. is a
California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is best known for
operating a website (alexa.com) that provides information on the
web traffic to other websites. Alexa collects information from
users who have installed an "Alexa Toolbar," allowing them to provide
statistics on web site traffic, as well as lists of related links.
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ALEXA COM 03/07 |
Alexa ranks sites based on visits
from users of its Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer and from
integrated sidebars in Mozilla and Netscape. There are several
third-party extensions for Mozilla Firefox; these extensions do not
affect Alexa website rankings.
There is some controversy over how representative Alexa's user base is
of typical Internet behavior. If Alexa's user base is a fair statistical
sample of the internet user population (e.g., a random sample of
sufficient size), Alexa's ranking should be quite accurate. In
reality, not much is known about the sample and it may or may not have
many sources of sampling bias. Alexa itself notes several examples.
Another concern is whether Alexa web site ratings are easily
manipulated. Some webmasters claim that they can significantly improve
the Alexa ranking of less popular sites by making them the default page,
by exchanging web traffic with other webmasters, and by requiring their
users to install the Alexa toolbar; however, such claims are often
anecdotal and are offered without statistics or other evidence.
FaceTime Researchers Discover Symfly
Trojan Abusing Alexa Toolbar
FOSTER CITY, Calif., March 13 -
FaceTime Security Labs, the threat research and remediation arm of
FaceTime Communications, has discovered a Trojan named Symfly that may
influence Alexa Web traffic rankings for several Chinese Web
sites. Customers who have deployed FaceTime Enterprise Edition,
including RTGuardian, GEM and IMAuditor and configured for automatic
filter updates, are automatically protected from this security threat.
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About: | ALEXACOM | WWWAlexa |
Web Site Rankings | www.alexa.cm
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