alexa: Amazon will shut down Alexa.com website ranking service – Times of India

US-based e-commerce giant Amazon launched the Alexa internet feature as a website ranking service in 1996 which is a paid subscription service with detailed SEO analytics and insights. Amazon has announced that it will close the Alexa.com service which it had operated for the last 25 years. This service offers a paid subscription with SEO research and analytics tools will eventually stop providing website statistics and rankings in May 2022. Amazon said that the API of this service might also be turned off by the company in December 2022 after Alexa Internet is shut down. However, Amazon will allow its users to back up their Alexa internet data before the service closes for good.
Bleeping Computers report that Amazon has confirmed its decision to close the Web ranking service within May 2022 on a support page of the company. The company mentioned on its support page, “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”. Alexa Internet has stopped accepting new subscriptions since December 8 but the existing customers will be able to access data until the service finally goes down.
Amazon introduced Alexa Internet back in April 1996 with Alexa Traffic Rank (or Global Rank) becoming the service’s most popular metric, which provides users with an estimate of the popularity of a certain website. The company will allow users to back up their data before the shutdown and will ask the customers to delete their Alexa.com account after taking back up. The report also adds that the APIs of this service will be closed down in December 2022.
Amazon has not provided an official reason for closing down the Alexa Internet service. The report suggests that data from traffic and marketing analytics firm Semrush has shown that there has been a constant decline in the service’s own traffic over the years. Alexa Internet’s Twitter and Facebook accounts have not yet been updated with the announcement of the upcoming shutdown.