Question

Any ideas how I can block Alexa Toolbar users? I don’t want to appear in the rankings while we are in beta …

I see you can block their search engine with

User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

but I can’t find any documentation on how to pull your self from actually being ranked..
I read earlier someone tried to email them and they rufused.. So I guess I’m forced to block them?

Any better ideas, or way ideas on how to block them access?

Answer 1

For those finding this post later I worked out my own solution.
Seems when the alex toolbar is installed it shows up in the user agent.

<?php 
echo $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
?>

You can redirect those users with php

preg_match('/(Alexa)/i',$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])?header('Location: http://alexausersgohere.com'):null;

You could also just redirect them by dumping this in your .htaccess file.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Alexa
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ alexausersgohere.com#$1 [R=301,L]

Make sure you double check that htaccess code I just wrote it as a demonstration, its un-tested I used php.