Nasty-Alexa-Exploit Related to Google Search
Alexa has been used by domainers, webmasters, marketers and investors as a tool for valuing websites and determining traffic and reach. A new apparent exploit has called into question the value of Alexa's traffic rankings, and the safety of browser toolbars in general.
Domainers have speculated for years about using scripts with Alexa toolbars to refresh their web pages over and over again, leading Alexa to report higher traffic statistics. At least one porn website is now showing up in the list of related websites for Google on the Alexa toolbar, for most Google web searches. Search for house, dog, children's games, and the porno website shows up on the toolbar. What's more is that on Alexa.com's traffic ranking page for google.com/search (virtually any term), the porn site shows up on the list of related sites there as well.
According to Alexa, the porn site taking advantage of what ever exploit there is, has gone from no traffic ranking to a daily of 38,000, equalling probably 10,000 visitors per day.
Read more about this at http://www.databanks.com/blog/
Alexa has been used by domainers, webmasters, marketers and investors as a tool for valuing websites and determining traffic and reach. A new apparent exploit has called into question the value of Alexa's traffic rankings, and the safety of browser toolbars in general.
Domainers have speculated for years about using scripts with Alexa toolbars to refresh their web pages over and over again, leading Alexa to report higher traffic statistics. At least one porn website is now showing up in the list of related websites for Google on the Alexa toolbar, for most Google web searches. Search for house, dog, children's games, and the porno website shows up on the toolbar. What's more is that on Alexa.com's traffic ranking page for google.com/search (virtually any term), the porn site shows up on the list of related sites there as well.
According to Alexa, the porn site taking advantage of what ever exploit there is, has gone from no traffic ranking to a daily of 38,000, equalling probably 10,000 visitors per day.
Read more about this at http://www.databanks.com/blog/
