Not All Spyware is Bad
 Spyware is an increasing problem on the internet. Who of us has not been affected by one form of Spyware or another? By definition, Spyware is "software that self-installs on computers and tracks the user's Internet use, mainly for marketing purposes." As you know, most of this happens without your even being aware of it.
There is a way however, of taking and using this to your own advantage. We all want the search engines to know about our site. How though, do we inform the search engines as to traffic to our websites? There are services that try to provide this usage data, but unless the search engines have access to a site's server logs they, or anybody else, can not know for sure who or how many people visit your site. Not even Google's Analytics program provides complete data; although it is pretty good.
I am referring to toolbars. By installing particular toolbars onto your web browser, Internet Explorer and Firefox are the easiest to use in this regard, these toolbars will notify its search engine as to where you browse on the internet. To maximize effectiveness, you can then set your browsers home page to your website racking up extra hits.
It is well known that the search engines treat traffic to your website as a vote for that site. Without using an Analytic program or measuring click throughs from Why not let them know about your traffic. If you do not want them tracking your Internet usage then use a different browser for your private, more sensitive browsing habits.
The more well known search engine toolbars include, but are not limited to:
Google Yahoo MSN Ask AltaVista DogPile
I personally would not consider Alexa a search engine, but yet it does provide tracking data of sites which is then used by many SEO companies as a factor for measuring site value. You can get there toolbar here; alexa.com .
Use at your own risk. I personally have not seen any ill affects from these particular tools, except for the increased load time of web pages. In fact, some of these toolbars even provide limited protection from some unscrupulous websites.
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