Alexa

Alexa, formally known as Alexa Internet, Inc., is a subsidiary company of Amazon.com. It provides commercial web traffic data, global rankings, browsing behavior, and other information on over 30 million websites. Founded in 1996 its name was in honor of the Library of Alexandria, which was the famous repository of knowledge in the ancient world.

Many of the most popular website reference Alexa’s ranking and user data for their own promotions. Internet industry bloggers often reference rankings when writing ‘the best of’ articles for a variety of social networking, email marketing newsletter services, and social media marketing tools.

When they first launched, they offered a toolbar to users that provided suggestions for them to visit. Alexa also provides basic information for all sites in their database that includes who owns a site, number of pages, and how many other websites have back links to that site. They also offer site owners both free and premium services to increase their page authority. These include: enhanced site listings, certified site metrics, SEO audits, site comparisons, and more.

Early on, Alexa ranked sites based on tracking information from users that installed their toolbars. There are versions for the most popular browsers to include Firefox, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer. This does limit their data and in turn has generated some serious controversy over how representative Alexa’s user base is of typical Internet behavior. To address the criticism, they began using a more inclusive ranking system that incorporated data from other sources. And new features were added in order to compete with other web analytics services, such as Compete.com and Quantcast. The major downside for users has always been antivirus services who have ranked Alexa’s toolbar as adware or trackware. McAfee Site Adviser currently rates them as “green” or safe but does warn that there may be a danger of the site downloading adware to the user’s computer.