Alexa, "The Web Information Company", is a subsidiary of Amazon and provides worldwide access to data on the web for customers and interested parties. There is a free and paid version of this analysis tool. Alexa was initially known for its toolbar.
Products and services
Alexa services are most often used to examine the traffic of a website. The traffic figures provided do not necessarily reflect the actual traffic figures, but rather show an assumed trend. At the same time as these indicators, Alexa offers payment services such as Alexa Pro. Web operators can get a toolkit that provides metrics, tools, and analysis. The Alexa Site Audit is one of the SEO solutions offered. At the same time, Alexa provides feedback machine databases to nonprofits.
History
Alexa Internet Inc. was founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat. It was acquired by Amazon.com in 1999 and now operates as a subsidiary of Amazon.com. Initially, Alexa was used as the Internet Explorer browser toolbar. Meanwhile, the functions of Alexa are comparable to those of a search engine, since they evaluate the quality of the links, the thematic meaning and the traffic of a website.
Alexa ranking
The Alexa rank indicates the number of visitors to a website. Using the Alexa rank, the 1,000,000 most searched websites are determined. The most visited sites are evaluated with a traffic ranking of 0 - 50,000. This figure indicates a high popularity for a website that has many visits.
Alexa toolbar
The Alexa Toolbar serves as a tool to show Alexa performance indicators. The Alexa Toolbar can be installed in any standard browser and displays useful information about a domain, such as the number of links or traffic positioning.
Importance for SEO
Alexa rank is usually a clue to estimate the number of visitors to a web portal for SEO purposes. Compared to precision digital analytics like Google Analytics, Alexa Rank is much less accurate. Regardless, it is feasible to get more accurate data from the paid version of Alexa. Alexa Rank can still provide additional aspects of analysis for benchmarking or site comparisons.
Alexa and privacy
Alexa has been installed as a browser plug-in through software packages for a long time. After installation, this plugin deliver anonymous data to Alexa, on the basis of which the company can establish the access data to the websites. This practice was criticized by Bremer's Data Protection Supervisor and labeled Alexa as spam software. Thus, user instructions were issued on how to prevent data collection by the Alexa plugin.
Right now, there is a wide spectrum of information available regarding the work of the secret services due to the Edward Snowden revelations, but Alexa did not have a predominant role in the privacy debates.
In Alexa's privacy statements, there is a passage that explicitly refers to the fact that the plugin collects data about the websites you visit and that is not necessarily anonymized. Any user using the Alexa toolbar or plugin should be aware of how the tool works.
