Amazon is shutting down its web traffic analysis service Alexa Internet. The company has announced that Alexa.com will go offline in May 2022. The service has been around since 1996, almost two decades before the retail giant launched a digital assistant of the same name.
“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,” the company announced. “Thank you for making us your go-to resource for content research, competitive analysis, keyword research, and so much more.”
Alexa Internet is mostly an unknown name today, with everyone associating Alexa with Amazon’s digital assistant. But the service was a pretty big deal for old-school internet users. Founded in 1996 and acquired by Amazon in 1999, Alexa Internet offered, among other things, a ranking of the world’s most popular websites. It used data from its browser extension, partners, and a combination of other methods for this raking system. Its website rankings are referenced in platforms like Wikipedia as well.
Alexa Internet operated as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon. It offered paid subscriptions with additional data and information for site owners. These include competitor analysis tools and other SEO tools that could be used to improve the website and increase traffic inflow.
However, Amazon has struggled to retain the popularity of the Alexa Internet in recent years. The emergence of rival services such as Similarweb and ComScore means it’s been on a constant decline for several years now. With seemingly no sight of improvement in its popularity, the company has now decided to shut down the service permanently.
Amazon no longer offers new subscriptions for Alexa Internet
Amazon says it has stopped offering new Alexa Internet subscriptions as of December 8, 2021. Existing subscriptions will remain active until the deadline day, i.e. May 1, 2022, unless the user decides to cancel their subscription before that. The last billing will be before April 1, 2022. And if you want to export your data from the service, the company has provided a step-by-step guide as well. You can also delete your Alexa.com account.
Amazon seems to have already shuttered Alexa.com for free users though. The website doesn’t show any information but asks paying users and agencies to log in. Anyways, note that despite sharing the same name, shutting down of Alexa Internet will not affect the Alexa digital assistant. The latter is a separate service from Amazon.
2021-12-13 15:08:05