Alexa has long had a toolbar available for Internet Explorer. However, when it came to Firefox, almost no direct support was available, and so several enterprising individuals created toolbars themselves for Firefox. These solutions were usually to be found at Mozilla in the extensions section.

Now, however, Alexa’s got Sparky. To get this, simply open this page in Firefox and you’re taken straight to the plugin. Its webpage cites:

* Related Links: Find sites that are similar to the one you are currently visiting.
* Traffic Trend: A sparkline showing the traffic trend from the last four months.
* Reach Meter: A neat little indicator that shows the site’s Reach.
* Traffic Rank: Shows the current site’s Alexa Traffic Rank.

Once installed, it can be found in the bottom of the right hand side of your browser screen.

Clicking on the ‘a’ in the middle of the bar brings up a list of options for the extension.

I don’t know exactly how it compares to the IE Toolbar, but you can find that out for yourself. For FF users, though, it represents an improvement over Alexa’s previous support! Let’s see what happens.