Internet Buzz with Richard Wiggins | 12

Sidebar metadata is where everywhere is going. Populating a sidebar with history and bookmark information is common – but we populate it with what you're looking at at the moment. Related Sites is a nifty component; the full Alexa includes statistics, site ownership information, and integration of 3rd party ratings. Many users will want to move up to full Alexa functionality.

We have some anecdotal evidence based on hundreds of thousands of people that leads us to identify three modes of users. Scott Hassen on our staff breaks them down this way:

• News mode: the user visits a sequence of sites, looking at each methodically, as you might when reading a newspaper or news magazine.

• Geek and peek mode – you're trying to answer a real world question. This is the dominant share of Net use. This is where the Net is really impacting real world life – you're using the Net for reference material. In this mode, there are many page turns, a lot of use of search engines, a lot of clicking on hyperlinks.

• Entertainment mode. Here, the journey is its own reward. The sites may offer porn, chat, etc. In this mode, people stay on same site on extended periods. The user clicks through, stares at pictures.

It's important to note that this is based on aggregate data. We never look at an individual's surfing habits, and we don't provide such data to third parties.

People use related links for the "geek and peek" largely. Entertainment surfers also find us very useful at times.

Our site statistics help people find out who a site is, how important it is. This is useful for consumers – you get a sense of how real, how solid a site is. It's also useful to online marketers.

Web journalists like the site statistics a lot, too. They run across a lot of new sites, and it's helpful to know which ones are used a lot, as well as the ratings and ownership information.

In general, the folks that are using the Net for real stuff find us the most useful – they keep us.

We don't think people rely on us enough to become a self-fulfilling prophecy where everyone goes to the Budweiser site. We'd love to have that problem, but we know we're not there.