Well, it's this SEO's dream anyway.
You see, my biggest frustration in life is lack of time. It limits the potential of any given hour or day. I sometimes think to myself - sure, I could be running an SEO analysis on this site... OR I could be sitting next to my wife on the couch, eating chocolate and watching Venture Brothers re-runs. You can see my dilemma.
Enter the new mozbar:
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Sweet, eh? Download it here.
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It probably comes as no surprise that, just like nearly every other SEO in the field, I waste a lot of time doing the same tasks over and over again. Namely:
- Looking up the link data of a site/page to get an idea of its relative importance from a link popularity perspective
- Viewing the source code of a page to analyze the meta data, on-page content, and SEO-specific tags
And now, with the new mozbar, I'm spending 1/10th of the time it took me previously to get that critical information.
I'll show you what I mean. Let's say I needed to analyze my new friend Chadd's website. Chadd sells straight edge & safety razors, but I'm not convinced he's doing all the right things from an SEO perspective:
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Sharp razors, but is the SEO sharp?
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Rather than going through the time consuming act of scrolling through Chadd's nasty source code to find the answers, I can use the mozbar's nifty "analyze page" feature, thusly:
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Screw "view source" - this rules!
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I can clearly see that my friend Chadd needs to do some work if he wants to rank "safety razor." This view shows me data on:
- The URL
- Page Title
- Meta Description
- Meta Keywords
- H1
- H2
- HTML Text
- Bold/Strong
- Italic/Em
- Alt Text
- Meta Robots
- Rel="Canonical" usage
- IP Address
- mozRank (for the URL, subdomain and root domain)
- mozTrust (for the URL, subdomain and root domain)
- # of External Links (for the URL, subdomain and root domain)
- # of Linking Domains (for the URL, subdomain and root domain)
Unfortunately, we have lost one feature - Google's PageRank. The powers that be at Google have asked us to remove that functionality from our toolbar and we've complied. We know this is frustrating, but we also need to respect the engines' wishes - after all, we wouldn't exist without them :-) If you're searching for alternatives, I'd suggest SearchStatus (which has a number of cool functions) or Live PageRank (which will give you just the PR bar and you can drag it to whatever location you'd like).
The new mozbar is just launching and will likely have a few bugs - please report these in the comments below and feel free to suggest any additional functionality you'd like to see. We'll be spec'ing fixes & upgrades in the next couple weeks
Change your life. Download the mozbar.
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p.s. Last time Chadd (from RetroRazor.com) and I were out together at a party, he gave me a free Retro Razor to try. Does that mean I'm obligated to put a nofollow on the link above, even though I really like the shave?
Did the mozbar give you that bad tie too?
Just kidding Rand on the left. You the man. Don't hurt me.
For those of you who are new to the mozbar - I'd recommend keeping PageRank in your browser view through some other means.
Why?
Well, it's not a great SEO metric in general, but it does give you a good idea of which pages have been penalized when you pair it with a more raw metric like mozRank.
For example, if you see a page with a decent mozRank (4-5) but a PageRank of 0, that's usually a great sign that you're looking at a spanked page. Red buns and all.
And mozRank ain't too shabby for evaluating pages/links otherwise.
Yeah - agreed. I like the "live pagerank" plug-in above, because you can drag it right up next to the mozbar and see them compared at a glance. PR & mR: two great tastes that taste great together :-)
BTW - In the reverse scenario, where PR is much higher than mR (like 3-4 points higher), I generally see that either, Google is canonicalizing URLs that Linkscape isn't or that they've seen a lot of links we don't know about (slightly rarer).
On the tie - doh! I picked it up in Munich and really liked it, but maybe it's already due for an early retirement.
That's interesting - I haven't seen many cases like that. I'd love to see an example of that (post?).
Oh I was just being a wise ass about the tie. I have one just like it!
Edit: As you can see from the new avatar mozBar has had the reverse effect on me. I am now a bad, bad man.
Shall we ask Ciaran what he thinks of the tie?
MikeTek:
That PR is not a real and current one. Some websites may be new and could rank well with PR 0. It is because they have not been updated and that does mot mean they are not valuable websites.
Of course Google alters PR and can do so at any point for any page - it's not reliable as an empirical metric for that reason.
However, the temporal nature of PageRank is similar to mozRank in that it's subject to an update cycle. In other words, new pages won't show mozRank either for the same reasons.
So while you're technically right it should be somewhat obvious that metrics like this are not "real time." Where there's an indication that a page is new the evaluation I've mentioned above is far less valuable. You've got to filter for those indications.
In my experience this litmus test of sorts is great for "link" or "resources" pages on websites that provide questionable links. If you're wondering whether Google has swung their mighty multi-colored paddle at the keister of a shady web page that's been up for some time this is a clear indicator and pretty reliable.
As always, way cool and impressive...and a great sales resource...you know, when you get that client call out of the blue who wants to discuss their site there and then...instead of running around your keyboard/folders/lookups, just go to the URL, click on a few of the tools whilst having a preliminary chat and hey presto!...you are an instant expert on their site fundamentals.
And as you say, some huge time/efficiency savings...
Of course that's also going to make what you do appear to be very quick and easy to the client.
"You did the site analysis in 5 minutes, whilst talking on the phone, now you want to charge me how much ...?"
Yes, pbhj makes a very good point. I'd be very hesitant to just "push a button" and rattle off some stuff to the client.
I had a client a few weeks ago who hired me to do an analysis of her small biz site. I wrote a detailed 10-page analysis. She was upset because she said that what I gave her was "generic" information that "everyone knows". Of course, that raised the question that if "everyone" knows this stuff, then why aren't they doing it...and why didn't anyone do even the simplest steps on her site (bad title tags, no relevant keywords in content...).
I think we need to somehow keep some sort of mystery to what we do.
-Jesse
Ah...I wasn't really talking about a "Five Minute Website Audit", more just the ability to briefly understand their basic site fundamentals whilst gaining the client's initial confidence...more to enhance the sales process rather than start consulting...
We're not big fans of "maintaining the mystery"...our approach is more along the lines of hiring an expert and then sharing our knowledge and expertise throughout the process...eg you could probably complete your own tax return but when the IRS pops in for a chat you probably want a pretty good accountant sitting by your side...or you may be happy defending yourself for that speeding ticket you claim was unjust, but you want a great lawyer sitting next to you for that homicide rap...and so, in the world of SEO, you could do it yourself, or you could hire an expert...works pretty well for us...but perhaps not for everyone.
I believe in complete transparency with my clients. SEO shouldn't be any more of a mystery than say, web design. Sure, any potential client could search for tutorials on how to build a website, or how to search engine optimize a website, but I'm assuming they don't have the time or interest in learning a new skill and that's why they have called me.
Yes, I can use the MozBar to tell a client over the phone some basics of the SEO on their site, but that's nowhere close to what they get with a complete SEO audit. If they think that's all there is to SEO, then I think it's our job to make it clear about what we can really do for them.
I think the idea of keeping aspects of SEO a mystery to clients only contributes to the wide spread belief that SEOs are shady snake oil salesmen. I think the more we educate our clients about what we do, the more value they will see in it, rather than thinking we're just taking them for a ride.
I completely agree with your comment, well said. I explain everything to my clients in a way that they can easily understand and let them know exactly why I am doing what I'm doing. I think it's useless to keep the client in the dark.
Yup...with you all the way Whitey...we document every step of the process and seek client sign-off at each stage, only after we have walked them through the documentation...and only implement after sign-off. Apart from protecting our professional indemnity insurance cover, a better-informed client always ends up being a better long term client...that way we can get past the "grunt" work stage and ego-rankings stage and move more quickly into SEO strategy and conversion development. More challenging and rewarding stuff.
I am not sure on this mentality. If a client told me that, I'd simply say I used a diagnostic type tool that I have access to that can do a quick check of your website. You explain to them that you pay for expensive tools and that checking a website and someone elses work is a lot different from doing work.
When you take a car into the mechanic and he runs a diagnostic test it's less than a hundred but the work that might need to be done could easily be in the thousands.
Nice analogy...mind if I use it?
Alright ... I guess its time to go pro, can I use pro as a tax write off?
Do you consider SEOmoz a professional membership. I do! Tax write off!!!
Are you considering it as something that will help you run a for-profit business? If so, its a legit tax writeoff or "expense". If you aren't doing SEO professionally and rather the membership is more of a personal interest than its not an expense.
I'm guessing that for you - and 90% of those reading this thread - it is a valid expense or write-off. Most of us do SEO in order to generate revenue in some way - either for ourselves as affiliates, or for our clients as a consulting service, etc. In those cases if this membership helps you do a better job its an expense. In fact, so long as it was purchased for that reason, its a legit expense.
See: https://taxes.about.com/od/businessexpenses/qt/BusinessExpense.htm
About RetroRezor, it seems that you do not use it because you still have beard so you do not have to put nofollow. In the case that you shave yourself Rand then I think that you should put nofollow :D
Excellent. A big improvement - no small feat.
I do have a couple of suggestions though:
I've often wanted access directly to Labs in one of the dropdowns (even if it's to the Labs landing page and doesn't auto-populate a field in a specific tool).
Could there be the option to remove the 'show nofollow' button - i have about 6 plugins that provide this functionality and I don't use it in any of them very often. Yes it's handy to have on demand, but you could use the space for something else... like comparable linkdomain reports from the engines (or even majestic if you wanted to really pay it forward). of course you want us to use linkscape, but we also have to use other data too. make it easy.
Maybe that was 3 suggestions...
One bug also: it seems to think the 'co' in .co.uk is the root domain when you analyse a page.
Minor Bug Report:
If the meta description is entered with a capital D like this:<meta name="Description" content="bob loblaw"> then the Analyze Page option says there is no meta description.
Who is Bob Loblaw?
:-)
I'll always thumb up an AD reference. :P
Nice catch! I'll add this to the list for an upcoming maintenance update.
Love the Arrested Development reference! :)
Likewise, meta keywords is a no show if the K is used.
No love for Google Chrome?
:(
On the toolbar I'm getting "PRO ONLY" on the vast majority of features and buttons. Bug or intentional?
The link data from Linkscape is mostly PRO stuff, but the other features, including most of the analyze page stuff, is available for free.
I'm getting PRO ONLY too -- but I'm a Pro member and logged in as such. I'm using Firefox 3.5 on Mac OS X.
I'm getting PRO ONLY too -- but I'm a Pro member and logged in as such. I'm using Firefox 3.5 on Mac OS X.
This new update looks awesome. I always loved being able to look at domain-level metrics at a glance, so the addition of "links to do subdomain" is gonna be very useful.
And the Analyse Page button looks very cool. I currently use a mixture of Aaron Wall's SEO Xray (from SEO for Firefox) and Search Status to pull out info about on page stuff like titles , meta descriptions and h1s. I think this may just have replaced them for me!
Finally, a request - any chance you can make the "show nofollows" button remember whether it was on or off between browser sessions? I think this used to be the case in the first version of the mozbar and I've been missing it ever since - I like to always have it on, helps me notice nofollows when I'm not specifically looking for them...
Well done guys, this is one of the best seo tools in my arsenal.
Great tool. I'd like to suggest two versions of the tool. Half of the features require me to upgrade to pro, and some don't tell me until after I click the link. Trying to keep track of what I can or can't use on the Toolbar is rather annoying, and I wanted to uninstall it just as quickly as I installed it.
Now I know, some will say just go Pro, then you wont need to worry about it. True, but what about the guy who doesn't know who SEOmoz is, and finds a link to the toolbar on some random website? I think you would get more links to the tool if you had a free version with all of the features working, and only a couple of upgrade to pro pushes.Then also a version for Pro Members only.
I was very impressed with the Analyze Page button, and will probably keep the toolbar installed for that alone.
I also wanted to mention I think the Show Nofollows button is great too, I just didn't think to mention it because I was already using one from "that other guy's" toolbar.
Great tool Ran, i am thinking of becoming a pro again.
I would like to ask what is the following mozRank and mozTrust?
Your system requirements says Firefox 2 required. I tried to install MOZbar 4. I get an error message saying it must have Firefox 3 - 3.5
Oh.
My.
God.
I have no doubt that the MozBar is useful, paradigm changing and all sorts of cool.
But.
Really.
"I was a bad man once. But mozbar changed my life"?
Please come to London again immediately so that we can discuss this.
Wow!!! This is really cool!!! I cannot wait to try this out on my wife's website!! Will make finding the problem areas much easier!
THanks
Lee
Just a slight bug here.
When I've got the "analyze page" feature open in one tab, it still looks like I should be able to switch back and forth between other tabs, but I can't.
Maybe a grey-out or something on the rest of the page would make the lack of navigability a little more intuitive. I was surprised and a tad frustrated.
Other than that, love the tool so far!
If you are really want to make SEO for your site then it is recommended that you should give the work to any SEO company who will do the work efficiently. More importantly try to give the work to any local good SEO company. For example if the site belongs to Florida then try to find good Florida SEO Company.
I think the purpose of the tool is to be used as a tool. I don't think it's supposed to be an all-encompassing answer. It's just another way to analyze a page more efficiently so that you can spend that extra time working off of that data to improve/strengthen your online marking efforts.
This is really splendid news for me. Especially since PageRank bars are failing. I thought I'd share this graphic that Jeff Call created: https://www.seo.com/blog/speaking-at-pageranks-funeral/ It made me chuckle.
Has anyone else noticed a page resizing issue? I'm having trouble describing it but I think the bar caused my pages to not readjust when the window resizes - this makes it extremely difficult to surf/search at times on smaller computers.
Maybe I have too many addons running? Or perhaps its just the mozbar?
Ack! I tried it for the first time today and it didn't work. I got to the site I wanted to analyze and pressed the "Analyze Page" but nothing happened. I logged out and logged in again, tried it again and still nothing happened. Did I do something wrong?
Ok, reinstalled it today, restared Firefox, and it's fine now. Thanks, guys! :D
Randfish:
How is your toolbar crawling/finding H1 and H2 elements on page. I have a site where Flash lays over h1 and h2 elements as they are loaded. The toolbar says that the page does not have an h1 element, however when viewing the source the element is plainly there. If your tool isn't reading the source what is it reading?
Also the Google Cache text-only version also shows the h1 and h2 elements.
I've had a few issues too, but all in all it's a handy tool.
I am looking at various pages of https://sciencengod.com. Source code shows several tags which are not shown in Moz tool bar, namely Meta tag - news_keywords, Meta robot tag - Noydir
Shall anybody explain reason for this difference.
It's amazing :-)
thank you very much
Good stuff Rand! This new upgrade saved me a lot of time already.
Just one thing, which I'm not sure if it's a bug or what. When I'm on Google+ and have the MOZbar on, the little G+ navigation bar (top left corner which drops down when you hover over it) disappears. I only tried this in Chrome.
I have been using this toolbar since years and it been very must useful for me..
Wow... what a great post! I need help with this too! I mostly use AltoMerge to merge PDF files. You can easily merge your documents here https://goo.gl/30OjFr
Great toolbar indeed. Well done Rand. And one thing I must definitely to tell you Rand. You really look cool both being a bad guy and a good guy. Lol.
Any ETA on the update for FF 3.5.2? :)
or 3.5.3. . .
Oops. All I had to do was uninstall and reinstall. Thnx.
Thanks Rand for the toolbar. This is a cool tool bar especially for noobs like me when it comes to SEO.
2 thumbs up!!!
Great update, I've already found the Analyze Page feature to be very helpful when quickly going over websites from clients.
It's a shame that Google asked PageRank to be taken down but such is life. The only thing that I feel could be changed is the Log In button that takes you to the seomoz site. It would be helpful if it opened a new tab... :D
I think seomoz gives you very good data. But the toolbar is not good for my firefox setup.
I use two other seo toolbars that has the option to turn them off, and only get data when you need it (on demand/when you click the buttons etc).. like seobook toolbar.
I dont need to know mozdata of every single page I look at.
Yup 2 thumbs up. A lovely little timesaver.
I've been using the mozBar for a few weeks now, and I think it's time to say - this think absolutely cranks!
I love it, it's the most handy little SEO tool!
Nice work!!!
I just used analyze page for 2 websites and found that the Meta description and Keyword showing "not found" altough they are present in the site. Not sure what the problem is
the meta tags only show up if the tag is defined using "name" instead of "http-equiv"
Bloddy hilarious:
Bad guy before - Good guy after
Thanks for the good laugh
Any chance of a version for us IE users?
Thanks,Joel
Hi Rand,
Thanks for this blog / all the info ... I'm a big fan and relatively new to the world of SEO.
Question: I understand PR as a concept has declined in importance but surely pagerank/juice calculations are going on in the background, as PR sculpting, nofollows, and all that have a discernible impact. Any thoughts on why Google would explicitly ask you to remove it? Is this a SEO issue or possibly something market/competition-related where they want to take focus off PR?
Thanks
You know, i was going to suggest two of the features you have already included.
Love the page analysis!
*Upgrades* * RESTARTS - "Meh"* *Plays*
Sadly, the "analyse page"-feature is not working in my browser (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de-DE; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Firefox/3.5.1). The button triggers an action, but I can only see the black outline and the scrollbar of the window.
Looks like I need to look take remedial SEO...yikes! There will be some changes a coming, and glad you like the shave!
chadd @RetroRazor
Not wanting to pry but where is Rand using the razor .. it sure ain't on his chin. Least said best I expect.
Rand, Moz team, Mozbar seo rockstars!
great job!
=)
Toolbar looks great!
However on one of our site, I just noticed that once I clicked on Show Nofollows, it doesn't seem to highlight Nofollow on an animated gif image. While the Quirk is able to highlight it well.
Very cool tool! Downloading now!
So Rand, how much data are you mining with the new and improved mozbar? Like what exactly is getting stored at the "mozplex" if i would choose to install and use it?
Any request that's made to the API gets logged, so we know URLs that we've served out data for or where requests have been made. However, we felt it was very important not to tie these to individual user accounts, so we're internally anonymizing that information. It's not particularly valuable to us, and makes sure that if a government entity requests browser usage for an individual, we wouldn't be able to hand that over.
I don't think there's any other information we're storing right now from the bar - no search queries are made through it... I can ask Nick to triple-check that, though. We may, in the future, try to store aggregated SERPs that are performed by toolbar users (again, anonymizing the records) for analysis purposes, but I can't think of something beyond that.
On edit: A more succinct answer would be - nothing we didn't track before.
Oops - one more clarification on edit: We do briefly store user IDs with requests (in order to check for abusers), then we anonymize this data for the reasons described above. Thanks to Sarah for clarifying to me.
Rand, You mentioned that H1 is no longer an important factor so should we really pay attention to it anymore?
How about H3/4/5? Do they have any importance at all?
I think when looking at a website it's important to pay attention to all factors. Granite on the whiteboard friday video a few weeks back they said that H1 headers do not have as big of an impact I think it's still important to see what sites are using them and which ones are not.
I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression. What I was trying to message is that H1 tags (and in fact all headline tags) with targeted keywords appear to have a very correlation with high rankings. That does not mean they're not important or that you shouldn't use them, it merely suggests that those who don't have found other ways to rank and that it may not be a particularly important factor. Correlation is not causation, and it would be imprudent to jump to conclusions based on correlation work alone.
I certainly think it's still worthwhile to look at the H tags and make sure you're doing what you intend with them, whether that's nothing, something or specific SEO targeting.
It is good you confirmed this. I also misunderstood that H1 and others does not help at all in the ranking but useful for users.
I hope members who misunderstood like me will read your comment.
Hi SEOMoz Team,
I've been having issues with logging in to use the SEOMoz Bar since I signed up as a pro member, I've put in a question on the Q & A, Danny suggested I log out visit 5 urls login and visit another 5 urls to try and resolve the problem.
Unfortuantely this has not resolved the issue and the ticket is now closed. I still don't see the pro options available, even tho I am shown as logged in when I visit the website. ( not showing as logged in the toolbar )
I'm using FF 3.5.1 on a windows XP desktop.
Sorry to hijack the thread, but I desperatly need to get this sorted so I can start enjoying the benefits of my pro membership...
( I've tried reinstalling FF, than installing the toolbar etc.. )
Yikes... That sucks. Shoot me a personal email - [email protected] - and I'll make sure the team is looking at it.
Had the same problem, it was solved after selecting 'Accept third party cookies'. Hope it works for you as well.
@ThijsOnline
Mate, if I had 10 thumbs to give you I would.
That totally solved my issue, can't believe it was that simple.
Definately a "Doh" moment.Thanks a mil.
@rand
All sorted, thanks. Might help to add that little tip to the support section.
Thanks. I too had the same problem and now it is working perfetly well.
for whatever reason neither this version or the previous one have ever been able to log into SEOmoz so the functionality has always been limited.
I logged out and then back in but still nothing. I'm on a mac using FF 3.5.1
Nick - I think this might be the issue described above
"Had the same problem, it was solved after selecting 'Accept third party cookies'. Hope it works for you as well."
If that doesn't work, please shoot us an email.
The toolbar is very snazzy indeed. Also, I'm afraid of the bad man Rand used to be.
I am downloading the mozbar. Gonna check it out. Thanks!
~Igor
Great improvements to the tool.
I think Chadd deserves some link love!
Thank you for this very helpful tool. And the good thing is - it's a free SEO tool!
Hello Randfish,
First of all thanks for this tool & this is really good for me & use full me in all the way..
Thanks a lot from one SEO
Regards,
Samir vohra
Great stuff Rand, the photo's of you at the end have made my Monday morning!
Gratz !! Rand.
This is the best toolbar for me so far, I like the new features. Keep it up, Google PR doesn't really matter tbh, because I have Google toolbar anyway. :d
Downloaded. Toolbars are cool again.
I'm pretty picky about the toolbars I install on my browsers, and one of the cool ones definitely just got cooler!
Excellent update to the Mozbar!
As I just detailed in my own blog post:
thanks again Rand!
Had the old one installed. May need to slap this new one in!
Our site is unfortunately encapsulated in SSL (https:) so I can't see accurate data using this tool (or other tools). While we are working on a new site, is it possible to find a solution for this?
Does anyone else have this problem?
Thanks
I am saddened by this also :(
Is anyone else having problems with the "Analyze Page" feature? It's not working for me...
doesn't work for me either. Love you guys....but a lot of your tools are buggy. at least when I use them...
Try uninstalling MozBar and download it agian.
How about keyword density? Like in SEOquake. Just handy for making sure most relevant keywords are covered and the most important ones a few times.
Especially useful on sites that you can't manage every page yourself - ie. a news site where journalists write the story and you need to check they are ensuring relevant keywords in copy.
Rand,
I did not update anything but it shows new updates you have made already. So do I need to reinstall again or does it update automatically?
Also it is really great help I think. Thanks for great update.
I believe it installs/updates automatically (much like StumbleUpon or other installed toolbars) when you restart Firefox.
Thanks,
Then all is right. I do not need to reinstall. It is really helpful and much more time saving now.
Okay Rand where is the PR bar, how about alexa rating, and what about a google, yahoo, and bing search fields. You could put a SE on there which when hovered would show 3 drop down fields to search in, Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Hey Bob - I talked about the PR number in the post. Google asked us to remove it, so we've had to comply. As for Alexa - I've never found it valuable and it has virtually no correlation with either actual traffic levels or rankings. Is it useful to you? If so, could you explain how? Certainly happy to make some effort to get it included if there's a value-add.
With regards to the search engines themselves, I'd think folks would be upset if we put search bars in the toolbar, since every installation of Firefox already has the search bar in the upper right (with that same drop-down functionality). We definitely don't want to eat up more screen real estate than necessary.
Thanks for the feedback!
Hey Rand,
I've found that the Alexa data can provide some very broad usefulness when doing a competitive review. I've noticed for instance that a high Alexa rank is reasonably well correlated with a high number of Backlinks. I've also noticed that a high Alexa rank is reasonably well correlated with a high Compete Monthly Unique Visitor score (if Compete has data for the site).
I know it's pretty loose, and I don't place a massive amount of emphasis on Alexa or Compete rank, but I do find it adds that little bit extra to a quick and dirty competitive review. Quantcast seems to almost never have any data on the sites I'm researching. In saying that, I'm not sure it's worth the effort to add it to the Mozbar, but I'd be interested in hearing other peoples' opinions?
Are there any other market research sources you would recommend for providing a more accurate representation of traffic levels?