Alexa has just added a new ‘feature’ to it’s service that show ‘other sites owned’ by the same people as the site being featured.
So for ProBlogger it shows two other sites – gambling watch and idolblog (see screen cap below).
I see two problems with this.
Firstly some might argue that there are privacy issues at stake here. I don’t have a massive issue with it on this front as I don’t have any sites I’m ashamed of – but interestingly I’ve just used this feature on a few other blogs that I read and have found other blogs that I’d not heard of that do seem to be written by those bloggers (on one occasion it was a blog on a topic I don’t think that they’d like to be known publicly as the owner of).
Secondly (and more importantly) – I don’t own either of the two blogs that it says I own. I know for a fact that idolblog is hosted on the same server as mine – but gambling watch is a site I’m not really familiar with. I suspect it could also be hosted on the same server – but it’s definitely not one that I ‘own’.
I wonder how many others are being associated with sites that they have no connection to? What do you think of this feature?
Found via an email from Derrick who feels pretty passionately about the issue as you’ll see from his site. For more reading on this see Webmaster World’s forums.
