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We will be retiring Alexa.com

support.alexa.com

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Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#31

Post by renewiltord »

dredmorbius wrote: post #20
renewiltord wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your resolver broken. opcode QUERY rcode NOERROR flags QR RD RA ;QUESTION alexa.com. IN A ;ANSWER alexa.com. 59 IN A 13.249.109.63 alexa.com. 59 IN A 13.249.109.113 alexa.com. 59 IN A 13.249.109.43

Ah. Probably my router's adblock. I can resolve the host directly querying 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 resolvers. Not broken so much as working as configured ;-)

Cool, makes sense. Here's a tool you can use to verify that it's not your system that's stopping the request https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/dig/

Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#32

Post by lgats »

smarx007 wrote: post #24
ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #14

Wow, that is a bummer! Alexa is my go-to place to get a first impression on how much traffic a website gets. I have never looked into how they get their data, I always assumed they get it from internet providers? Is there an alternative? SimilarWeb publishes their data with a huge delay, so it is not of much use for me. From my experience, it is also less reliable. It is crazy how valuable internet properties get clo…

How does Alexa work? It seems to me it’s hard for anyone except Google Analytics or Cloudflare to build such a service.

Initially, it was mostly by monitoring the traffic of users of the alexa toolbar, https://www.alexa.com/toolbar

I think they moved on to more broad data sources, possibly purchasing data from ISPs.

Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#33

Post by [deleted] »

oblio wrote: post #9
fault1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In essense, what the original Alexa did seems to have been internalized into Amazon ads (or their b2b analytics division), which is coincidently the fastest growing part of Amazon. Wonder why they used the Alexa name for their home assistant.

Short, international, neutral name, somewhat easy to pronounce in many languages.

[deleted]

Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#34

Post by orliesaurus »

A huge piece of the internet is going away: back in the early 2000s I would use Alexa a lot it was a gold mine of information - to the point where some people bragged about their rank on Alexa - that was hilarious, like the modern "twitter followers" / "github stars"

Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#35

Post by lastofthemojito »

gonehome wrote: post #12
oblio wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short, international, neutral name, somewhat easy to pronounce in many languages.

It's also phonetically recognizable and distinct. It's one of the reasons you have to say "Hey Google" or "Hey Siri", but you're able to just say "Alexa" I find Siri the worst one for that, it often triggers on "serious".

The nice thing about "OK Google" was that it sounded a lot like "Cocaine Poodle", so you could imagine your personal assistant was a hyperactive creature of limited intelligence. Which honestly, sets expectations appropriately.

Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#36

Post by input_sh »

smarx007 wrote: post #24
ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #14

Wow, that is a bummer! Alexa is my go-to place to get a first impression on how much traffic a website gets. I have never looked into how they get their data, I always assumed they get it from internet providers? Is there an alternative? SimilarWeb publishes their data with a huge delay, so it is not of much use for me. From my experience, it is also less reliable. It is crazy how valuable internet properties get clo…

How does Alexa work? It seems to me it’s hard for anyone except Google Analytics or Cloudflare to build such a service.

They used to have its own toolbar that tracked which websites users visit.

After that, they've paid other browser add-ons to add their script and some websites voluntarily gave them their data by adding their tracker.

It says so right on the about page (warning: unusable on mobile): https://www.alexa.com/about

Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#37

Post by bredren »

gandalfian wrote: post #7

It used to be people with the Alexa tool bar were measured to produce a ranking. I wonder how they have been doing it more recently and how accurate it actually was now?

Ya, I think it was originally interesting because it claimed to show google pagerank. There was a tiny measurement bar.

Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#38

Post by gumby »

gonehome wrote: post #12
oblio wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short, international, neutral name, somewhat easy to pronounce in many languages.

It's also phonetically recognizable and distinct. It's one of the reasons you have to say "Hey Google" or "Hey Siri", but you're able to just say "Alexa" I find Siri the worst one for that, it often triggers on "serious".

My watch’s Siri seems to trigger when washing my hands, or sometimes when I am in the kitchen and somebody else opens the tap.

I was on a zoom call the other day, both of us using speaker (no headsets) and something trigger both our watches to say, “sorry, I didn’t get that”, in each of our languages. At least we both laughed.

Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#40

Post by ralusek »

input_sh wrote: post #36
smarx007 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Alexa work? It seems to me it’s hard for anyone except Google Analytics or Cloudflare to build such a service.

They used to have its own toolbar that tracked which websites users visit. After that, they've paid other browser add-ons to add their script and some websites voluntarily gave them their data by adding their tracker. It says so right on the about page (warning: unusable on mobile): https://www.alexa.com/about

You'd assume that this would give a super biased sample of the population that would skew boomer+.
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