Windows Phone Thoughts: Brighthand Popular with Alexa Toolbar Users

Brighthand has published an interesting article on their traffic ranking with Alexa and direct comparisons with Pocket PC Thoughts and other PDA Web sites. My only comment on this is that this traffic ranking only pulls in results from people using the Alexa toolbar, so the results only apply to a specific group of users, and are meaningless in the overall picture. :wink: In fact, Alexa has largely been declared a spyware tool by most people (I know I'd never install it). Want to see why? Check out their privacy statement. Here are a few choice quotes (uppercase theirs):

"ALEXA'S TOOLBAR SERVICE COLLECTS AND STORES INFORMATION ABOUT THE WEB PAGES YOU VIEW, THE DATA YOU ENTER IN ONLINE FORMS AND SEARCH FIELDS, AND, WITH VERSIONS 5.0 AND HIGHER, THE PRODUCTS YOU PURCHASE ONLINE WHILE USING THE TOOLBAR SERVICE. ALTHOUGH ALEXA DOES NOT ATTEMPT TO ANALYZE WEB USAGE DATA TO DETERMINE THE IDENTITY OF ANY ALEXA USER, SOME INFORMATION COLLECTED BY THE TOOLBAR SERVICE IS PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE. ALEXA AGGREGATES AND ANALYZES THE INFORMATION IT COLLECTS TO IMPROVE ITS SERVICE AND TO PREPARE REPORTS ABOUT AGGREGATE WEB USAGE AND SHOPPING HABITS...YOUR SEARCH RESULTS WILL BE TRANSMITTED TO AND LOGGED BY AMAZON.COM AND MAY BE CORRELATED BY AMAZON.COM WITH ANY PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION YOU MAY HAVE PREVIOUSLY PROVIDED TO AMAZON.COM."

I'd urge everyone to steer clear of Alexa, and that includes Brighthand users. :wink: I'm very pleased with the traffic level Pocket PC Thoughts has achieved in the past two and a half years, going from a personal Blog to a multi-user news & views site, and I have each one of you to thank for that. :way to go: