PhoneBoy Reviews: Alexa

• In terms of traffic, rates about half of five circles, which corresponds to being somewhere in the top 500,000 sites.
• There are 90 different sites with links to me.
• My site is "fast" (their definition of "fast" is faster than 50kb/s).
• My content "freshness" is excellent (means it is updated frequently).
• I have 134 unique pages on my site

The other, probably more useful feature of Alexa is the ability to rid yourself of the dreaded "404 Not Found" message. The 404 error code will often come up when you try and access a page that no longer exists. The company that provides Alexa solves this problem by archiving the Internet every couple months or so and stores it on tapes. Even they admit it's a tough task, given that the average webpage will last 45 days. If you get a 404 messsage from your web browser, check your Alexa toolbar for the "archive" button. If you click on the button, and the page has been archived, Alexa will pull the page from its massive tape archive. This process can take a few minutes, but it's beats a 404 message.

Like most programs, there's a price for it: advertising. The ads are about as small as those little icons for Netscape and ICQ on the bottom of my main page, and they are even somewhat context-sensitive as some ads will only appear on some sites (they may even appear as a "where to go next.")