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Alexa should be a lot of people interested in it ...
DNA
of
Alexa tool bar
want to thoroughly understand Alexa rankings is credible, must from the Alexa Global Web site traffic monitoring to conduct a comprehensive anatomy, of course, Alexa never published their technical details, the reporter decided to "the way, but also the body", Since Alexa claims its data source is the tool bar, the reporter decided to start by cracking the tool bar.
was commissioned by the reporter, the circle of well-known web technology experts Kobayashi, spent nearly a night of time, the Alexa toolbar and its data to the Alexa returned to a detailed analysis, to obtain a lot of valuable firsthand information. A few years ago on the Alexa study of Kobayashi that the recent analysis revealed some of the Alexa more secretive technical details.
Kobayashi told reporters, now the latest version of the Alexa toolbar operating mechanism and has not changed much, whenever the user with the Alexa toolbar, ie browser to open a new page, Alexa Server (data.alexa.com) will receive encrypted packets, the core information in this packet is more than 10 parameters, including the current page address, page open time, client display resolution, Alexa Toolbar version number, the user is "Amazon" Users, including an important hidden parameters, by Kobayashi analysis, that is the Alexa for each installed toolbar automatically generated ID number, this number should be the only global. Alexa can through this ID for each feedback packet of the issue of the unique identification, which is to solve the problem of PV repeat calculation and prevent the same user multiple times to refresh cheating an important means.
Kobayashi told reporters, from the current results of the study, any one of the assembly master can easily grasp the Alexa toolbar back to the secret of the packet, if this person is also a network programming master, then to the Alexa cheating on the more easy. From the reporter later on a shanghai Alexa cheat expert interview, small forest analysis is completely correct. The cheater is a senior web development engineer, and its use of the means and Kobayashi's analysis also basically coincide-to write a Alexa toolbar Return code generator, batch generated Alexa can identify code string, And then use the virtual multi-user way to send back to data.alexa.com, so that you can deceive the Alexa server, let it mistakenly think that these data are sent to different users (with the cheater I agree, this topic in the final public reporter and the cheater online chat record).
Kobayashi believes that this programmatic way of simulating multi-user access to the implementation of cheating, the most important link is that Alexa used to uniquely identify the identity of the ID number of the generation algorithm to crack, which requires a sufficient number of Alexa tool to sniff, crawl its data packets for quantitative analysis of the algorithm. But Kobayashi also pointed out that these work for a master programmer, it is not really anything, but the final cheat of the implementation still need to simulate a fast enough ID number generation program, which may be difficult, but according to Kobayashi estimates, the domestic can do these things a few people, It's just that the Internet is a community of experts who rarely do it.
from the above technical analysis, the Alexa server to do every day is to receive the global user back to the packet, extract the more than 10 parameters and write a special database, and then at a certain time to the day of the collected data analysis and calculation, And the new calculation results to update the ranking of the website of the day. According to reporters, the analysis of the database will be kept for at least three years, because in the Alexa site on each site rank Change trend Chart can provide up to three years of data changes.
After deciphering the DNA of the tool bar, the reporter also discussed with some friends the Alexa toolbar in the global distribution. According to Alexa, the tool bar is its only source of information, then the distribution of the toolbar in the global user has become another factor that can affect the Alexa rankings. If the toolbar is really the only source of Alexa data, you can imagine, when the Chinese netizens did not install Alexa toolbar, Sina Sohu such a portal site in the Alexa rankings will not see the shadow, but the second half of this year, Sina and Sohu have followed Google to the fourth and fifth place in the world, this seems to indicate that the Alexa toolbar has a high penetration rate in China, otherwise, Sina, Sohu and immediately after the occupation of the Alexa Global 500 in nearly 1/3 share of the Chinese site has been suspected of cheating.
Fortunately, a friend of the journalist, Cao, provided reassuring data. As an expert on Web traffic analysis, CAO provides long-term flow monitoring and statistical analysis Services for up to 2000 domestic websites in www.tong123.com. Cao traffic analysis and Alexa different, alexa is not monitored on the site to do anything, and tong123.com to the site of the page embedded way of third-party traffic statistics. Commissioned by the reporter, Cao temporarily in its data sampling analyzer added to the Alexa toolbar monitoring. After a week of data statistics, Cao concluded that the www.tong123.com system monitored 2000 of all users of the site, Alexa toolbar installation rate of about 1.5%.
in the press, Cao also sent to reporters to the results of the supplementary note, he believes that, because the tong123 system using the cumulative average of the calculation method, Alexa toolbar actual installation ratio should be higher than the current data, because the monitoring item just added soon.
Because the monitoring scope of the tong123.com is 2000 kinds of websites, basically excluding because the monitor object is less likely to cause the user choice tendency, its credibility is relatively high. Even with the 1.5% underestimated installation rate, the impact of Alexa on domestic users is staggering, and if domestic internet users are counted at 90 million, the Alexa toolbar may have more than 1.3 million users. According to Alexa's 10 million-or-so tool-piece global download total, China's internet users seem to be more focused on Alexa, which may also be as a domestic website this year in the Alexa rankings in the overall rankings to improve an explanation.
since the distribution of the toolbar will greatly affect the Alexa monitoring results, then the Alexa rankings may appear a large geographical relevance, if so, Alexa authority is really questionable. Things are far from so simple, on the Alexa site, the reporter saw the top 100,000 rankings of global Web site quotes are 499 U.S. dollars, obviously, on the other side of the ocean, or someone approved Alexa ranking data, and even spend money to buy that ranking data.
