There are a few of these services now-Alexa, stumble upon and so on that require the use of an installed toolbar to get the votes for your site.

That being the case you are really only likely to get votes from a limited audience-the geekier type, that would be installing these toolbars in the first place. So what is the value of such services to a site that isn't likely to target the geekier types?

I don't honestly know. I don't have any of those social-bookmark tools installed, don't even really use either of those sites, and I consider myself to be fairly geeky. (I dislike such things on principle, so refuse to install them. You never know who's going to put a rootkit on your machine. [Sony, I'm looking at you.])

You might try dropping by some of the SEO forums and asking this question, just to get additional points of view. I'm a sometime lurker at highrankings.com's forum, and there's lots of interesting information there - not just about SEO, but about issues just like this.

I'm in the same mindset. I hate all those toolbas, its tacky, distracting, and it takes up valuable real estate on my screen I could be using for other things. I'm not sure how all these slanted numbers became the measure of a websites ranking, but I fond some of them rather valueless except to be able to cite them and make yourself sound good. Google PR is one thing but Stumbles, Diggs, and Alexa seem skewed.

Well, the people who pay attention to those geekier things are the geeks. So, even if you'd get votes for your site by some means, if it doesn't really interest the geeks, results are likely to be not so impressive. Traffic needs to be targeted.

I too am of the geekier kind of person-just before people are unintentionally offended by my post! I do not like toolbars at all, and yes I am suspicious of what friend's they bring with them to have a party on your machine.

SEO is something that I have spent more than my fair share of time studying, and though some of the services-Alexa in particular seems to have a function it is still incredibly limited.

SEO should at least initially focus on the bigger targets-the big search engines being the most obvious. I don't see the point in aiming for the smaller guys, which these social bookmarking sites would seem to be.

I refuse to use any that install a toolbar to use, though. There are bookmarking sites that don't require a toolbar so they wouldn't hurt to add to your site/blog. It may not be a huge traffic getter but what you get is pretty targeted if it's tagged well.

I hate toolbars but have found StumbleUpon useful for finding content related to my own websites easier. This is very usual for seo stuff like link backs, artical submit, etc on sites you would otherwise not know about. Be selective though.

I think such toolbar work if you regularly participate and build up your network, most important things in these social site, you should have decent profile and customize your page to attract other members.

I am totally in agreement with you. I don't typically install toolbars, but I do have StumbleUpon installed, and I do use it regularly. I find that it's a great tool to use - if you are looking for content or if you are using it to market your own site. I don't think there is any disadvantage to it. I know that it works well to market blogs and articles that others might find useful or interesting.