Amazon has announced that on the 1st of May 2022 will shut down Alexa. Please, don’t panic. We are talking about Alexa.com, an online service about which most of you are likely unaware, and not the famous and beloved voice assistant.
The post on Alexa.com website says: “Twenty-five years ago, we founded Alexa Internet. 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”.
Alexa.com was founded in 1996 and later in 1999 bought by Amazon. Alexa is mostly known for Alexa Rank, providing a ranking of the most popular websites. The Alexa Rank service tracks and compares the traffic of websites by gathering browsing data through the combination of browser extensions and an embedded Alexa script that site admins could add to their pages to support tracking.
First, we should mention that Alexa rank is not completely accurate! Because Alexa rankings can be easily improved. On the other hand, it should be noted that the closer we get to rank 1, the less likely we are to change and the more reliable the rankings are. The question may be, what are the criteria for calculating rankings in Alexa?
- The number of IPs visiting a site on a national and global scale
- How many site visitors use Alexa Toolbar
- Site registration in Alexa panel in order to accurately calculate site visits
Its modern list of services includes options for monitoring important data like bounce rates, duration of average visits to the site, comparisons of the two or more tracked sites, and much more. The service also offers paid subscriptions for those who want detailed SEO analytics.
Alexa.com’s rankings have always been popular because of the importance of traffic metrics in many online businesses. Over the years, Alexa Rank remained the most familiar name in the web-ranking world. But, today, several alternate services exist, like SimilarWeb, Tranco, or ComScore.
In 2020 Alexa Rank had great success with about 5 million users monthly. But let’s admit that in 2021 Alexa.com users have steadily decreased while other similar tools had a significant user growth. In November 2021, the average number of unique visitors of Alexa fell by 28%.
Amazon didn’t explicitly say why it’s shutting down the service. But we can just assume that in our time Alexa Rank is sharing an increasingly competitive field and the cost of keeping the site is no longer worth the expense, even in the case of loyal users around. Now, SimilarWeb will become the ultimate solution in the areas where Alexa was.
Alexa’s users can see only how they rank compared to their competitors, but not what are those competitive tactics that guarantee to win the competitors.
“For over 10 years, Similarweb has been at the forefront of the digital intelligence era – providing rank data along with unparalleled, actionable insights on the performance of over 1 billion websites.”
SimilarWeb uses aggregated data to provide an unrestricted, 360-degree view of the web. With rank data along, Similarweb gives you insight into the performance of your website, industry, and competitive set.
You can check the breakdown of how many visitors your site received for the past three months on SimilarWeb for free. To get the full power of Similarweb digital intelligence, you can start a free trial.
