Amazon kills off Alexa Internet and it’s the right thing to do
No, not THAT Alexa but the other one that’s cherished by the SEO community
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This article was update to clarify thatAmazonis ending the original Alexa service, known as Alexa Internet.
Alexa.com doesn’t land you on Amazon’s infamousAlexavoice recognition ecosystem. Instead, it goes to a little-known service (albeit one still owned by Amazon) that, for a long time, was the go-to resource for everyone involved withsearch engine optimization(SEO), the art of trying to get your site to rank on search engines, first the likes of Yahoo!, then Altavista/Hotbot/Lycos/AskJeeves, then ultimately on Google.
Now, a post on theAlexa.com websitehas announced the service is no longer accepting new subscriptions and customers with an existing account will only have access to their data until May 1, 2022 - after which the service will no longer be active.
Alexa Internet was founded in 1996 and was one of the first acquisitions made by an up-and-coming ecommerce company called Amazon in 1999. Alexa ranks websites and was for generations of SEO practitioners, the first port of call for “content research, competitive analysis,keyword research”.
BeforeDomain Authority(DA) andPage Rank(PR), websites had an Alexa Ranking and to be in the top 1000 was a badge of honor for webmasters.
What’s next for Alexa.com?
“Twenty-five years ago, we founded Alexa Internet,” the site’s blog psot read. “After two decades of helping you find, reach, and convert your digital audience, we’ve made the difficult decision to retire Alexa.com on May 1, 2022. Thank you for making us your go-to resource for content research, competitive analysis, keyword research, and so much more.”
Amazon has not added any further information on why it is closing Alexa.com, but there’s at least two main reasons why. First, the obvious fact that the “other” Alexa needs to live on its own domain name and has grown big enough to justify this.
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Secondly, Alexa, the internet service provider, now operates in a super competitive marketplace where the likes ofSimilarweb,Ahref,SEMrush,Moz,AWRand otherrank checking servicesandSEO toolsoffer more comprehensive services at an aggressively fast cadence.
At the end of the day, Alexa has done its time, and after 25 years, it deserves to be sunset. The Alexa Rating no longer means anything - with thisGoogle Trends graph, highlights this better than anything else.
Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled inwebsite buildersandweb hostingwhen DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.
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