I have noticed a huge surge in Alexa popularity on the net and it seems to be a direct result of financial sites using Alexa to determine how a company is doing via its web traffic. Furthermore the advent of Million Dollar Home Page and its competitors has brought Alexa to the spotlight once again as the various pixel ad sites compete with each other to see who has the best rank (lower numbers are better). Alexa is not perfect but it seems to be a great way to evaluate website traffic for free.

I just learned there is a new Alexa competitor on the web named Consumer Input. To be honest between the Google Toolbar and Alexa Toolbar I am pretty much maxed out on toolbar real estate. I subsequently have not tried this new toolbar out. Still there is a whole world to conquer and not everyone has as many toolbars as I do. In addition, this new site is aggressively using Google ads to get the word out about its new service.

I think having an Alexa competitor is good as it gives people a second opinion of website traffic and can potentially yield more accurate results when used in conjunction with Alexa and Google Page Rank.

Of course Google is in the best position to display traffic rank of various sites if it chose to do so. I am not sure why it doesn't do this actually. I would surmise one day they will start giving this sort of information out. In the mean time we rely on Alexa and Consumer Input as two ways to monitor site traffic independently.