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We will be retiring Alexa.com

support.alexa.com

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Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#121

Post by barbazoo »

cobrabyte wrote: post #5

It's sort of wild to think that Amazon purchased Alexa.com in 1999 for ~$250M in stock, and that stock would be worth more than $7B today, if my math is correct. Bought a website ranking company, used the company's name as the name of a consumer electronics assistant, and then shuttered the company 22 years later to (presumably) be able to use the domain name for more consumer electronics.

Did they just have extreme foresight about wanting the domain alexa.com or were they genuinely interested in alexa.com as a product? They kept it around for 22 years after all but I can't see how what alexa.com used to do has anything to do with what amazon is doing.

Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#123

Post by bentcorner »

lgats wrote: post #29
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…

I've loaded in Alexa, Majestic, Cisco DNS, and Tranco rankings into this site: https://domain.glass/ycombinator.com#dns_rank Not the prettiest, but I use it a fair amount myself for researching domains.

apple.com being so high is (to me) a little counter-intuitive. microsoft.com too for the same reason. They don't seem like the sites people would be using a lot in their day-to-day lives. I guess it's counting dns lookups from devices and not necessarily "human" web page/app requests?

Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#124

Post by romwell »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #35
gonehome wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My favorite command is: "Obey, Booble! Bind my bone!"

Which is close enough to make Google find my phone :D

Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#126

Post by cutenewt »

smt88 wrote: post #86
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…

> Alexa is my go-to place to get a first impression on how much traffic a website gets. Alexa hasn't been a reliable source of traffic data for many years. It's gotten worse as mobile devices, private browsers, VPNs, and tight-fisted companies (like Facebook) have become more widespread. If you own a high-traffic site and check Alexa, it's not even close. One of my sites wasn't in the order of magnitude.

What's the best alternative for website traffic estimates?

Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#127

Post by aembleton »

kzrdude wrote: post #74
jlelse wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudflare has Radar: https://radar.cloudflare.com/

I don't understand how apple.com can rank over youtube.com? In what way is apple a daily service that people must access? I guess some apple service that I don't use like music?

Isn't it the default homepage on Safari? A few years since I've used a Macbook, but I thought it was.

Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#128

Post by freediver »

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…

Tranco list [1] is considered the most accurate source for relative site ranking by traffic. It is a result of triangulation of data from several sources (one of them is Alexa) and it what we use at Kagi Search for domain information [2]

[1] https://tranco-list.eu/

[2] https://kagi.com

Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#129

Post by CSSer »

bentcorner wrote: post #123
lgats wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've loaded in Alexa, Majestic, Cisco DNS, and Tranco rankings into this site: https://domain.glass/ycombinator.com#dns_rank Not the prettiest, but I use it a fair amount myself for researching domains.

apple.com being so high is (to me) a little counter-intuitive. microsoft.com too for the same reason. They don't seem like the sites people would be using a lot in their day-to-day lives. I guess it's counting dns lookups from devices and not necessarily "human" web page/app requests?

It's been forever since I've seen this first hand, but iirc apple.com and microsoft.com are both default homepages in Safari on macOS and Edge on Windows, respectively. That may artificially inflate the numbers a bit too.

Re: We will be retiring Alexa.com

#130

Post by chadlavi »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #35
gonehome wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

not sure if it's still the case, but in a similar vein you used to be able to say "hey booboo" to google devices
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