8 ms·

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,

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 closed down when they are owned by giant companies. According to Alexa, Alexa is still a top-5000 site: https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/alexa.com https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/alexa.com It seems insane to just close it down.

smarx007 5y ago
How does Alexa work? It seems to me it’s hard for anyone except Google Analytics or Cloudflare to build such a service.
- lelandfe 5y ago
  Handwavey "proprietary methodology" using data from "millions of Internet users using one of many different browser extensions" and "direct sources in the form of sites that have chosen to install the Alexa script."[0] Translation: trust us [0] https://www.alexa.com/about https://www.alexa.com/about
- lgats 5y ago
  Initially, it was mostly by monitoring the traffic of users of the alexa toolbar, https://www.alexa.com/toolbar https://www.alexa.com/toolbar I think they moved on to more broad data sources, possibly purchasing data from ISPs.
  - fragmede 5y ago
    Read between the lines as to how this similar product from Cisco works. http://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/umbrella-static/index.html http://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/umbrella-static/index.html
    - smarx007 5y ago
      Thanks! Goodness, only raised more questions: 1. What is Umbrella? See http://info.opendns.com/rs/033-OMP-861/images/OpenDNS-Global-Network.pdf http://info.opendns.com/rs/033-OMP-861/images/OpenDNS-Global... 2. What is Passive DNS? See https://docs.umbrella.com/investigate-ui/docs/passive-dns https://docs.umbrella.com/investigate-ui/docs/passive-dns
- input_sh 5y ago
  They used to have its own toolbar that tracked which websites users visit. After that, they've paid other browser add-ons to add their script and some websites voluntarily gave them their data by adding their tracker. It says so right on the about page (warning: unusable on mobile): https://www.alexa.com/about https://www.alexa.com/about
  - ralusek 5y ago
    You'd assume that this would give a super biased sample of the population that would skew boomer+.
    - duskwuff 5y ago
      It was always biased, and it's only gotten worse over time as browser toolbars have ceased to be a thing and data collection in browser extensions has been heavily discouraged. I have to wonder if that's one of the reasons they're phasing the product out.
  - madaxe_again 5y ago
    Yeah, it was also really handy for figuring out how to attack various web properties, as they frequently indexed administrative pages that were secured through nothing but obscurity, as the toolbar was most popular with amateur (and (im)professional) webmasters. Ah, the good old days.
  - bluetwo 5y ago
    Interesting. I wonder if Apple privacy policies killed it. Or if the fact everyone is using the same 10 web sites for everything has eroded the need.
- Uehreka 5y ago
  Google Analytics would only work on sites that run Google Analytics, which would exclude sites run by the other big tech companies. Alexa worked because their toolbar addon would record every site their users went to, regardless of what was running on the site.
- skarz 5y ago
  I remember vaguely that they got their metrics from a browser toolbar.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  It wouldn't suprise me if they got their metrics out of their arse. And that would explain the closeure.
lgats 5y ago
I've loaded in Alexa, Majestic, Cisco DNS, and Tranco rankings into this site: https://domain.glass/ycombinator.com#dns_rank https://domain.glass/ycombinator.com#dns_rank Not the prettiest, but I use it a fair amount myself for researching domains.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Damn, with that data TikTok.com is ranked #1 O_O
  - JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
    The world suddenly makes sense doesn’t it?
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      No a world where TikTok is the #1 website makes no sense at all. Though I suppose it's the sewer of the internet so it has to be everywhere.
      - FpUser 5y ago
        I've never looked at TikTok but I look every once in a while to a user comment section of some pretty reputable world / local news sites. This alone leaves the impression that the world populace is but a bunch of dumb indoctrinated rabid racists and haters.
        pookeh 5y ago
        My gut feeling is that most are nation-backed trolls.
        FpUser 5y ago
        Way too primitive for those I think.
diebeforei485 5y ago
> Alexa is my go-to place [...] I have never looked into how they get their data Right, this is a problem with all sorts of data sources that provide numbers (and use lots of SEO) but don't talk much about their methodology. CelebrityNetWorth is another example of this.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  I've come to assume that celebrity net worth sites are mostly just made up numbers. Sometimes you can look up the payout for some specific jobs, but not all, and most of the time, they seem to just ballpark a guess based on that.
  - diebeforei485 5y ago
    These website ranking websites like Alexa were also pretty close to ballpark guesses.
  - devoutsalsa 5y ago
    > I've come to assume that celebrity net worth sites are mostly just made up numbers. That’s how I increased my net worth to 100 million USD. Now I’m using rolling out an unstable coin trading under the symbol UCCT (UCrayCrayToken) backed by my CelebrityNetWorth.com value. I’m going to burn half the tokens soon, so now is a great time to buy tokens from me before they double in value.
tonymet 5y ago
they had a browser toolbar to collect user agent signals
smt88 5y ago
> 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.
- cutenewt 5y ago
  What's the best alternative for website traffic estimates?
  - celestialcheese 5y ago
    SimilarWeb is generally correct - but again, it can be pretty off in some cases. Another one that is sort-of accurate is SEMRush
tomlin 5y ago
How fondly people remember a company that totally installed tracking software into browser add-ons.
cyral 5y ago
I thought they had a browser toolbar/extension which they use to collect data from a very very small subset of internet users, which is probably incredibly biased to a certain audience. (e.g. boomers who don't know how to not install random toolbars when downloading stuff).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
freediver 5y ago
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/ https://tranco-list.eu/ [2] https://kagi.com https://kagi.com
- nr2x 5y ago
  Alexa was the strongest Tranco input, actually think this is quite bad for them.
Ozzie_osman 5y ago
I started a news aggregator that at the peak was ranked in the top ten Alexa sites in a country (was doing 100M page views / month). Alexa was the standard that people would use to judge how successful a site was.... Until people figured out how to massively game it. For a pretty small sum, you could approach illegal download or porn sites to embed an iframe of your site or do a pop-under ad, and instantly be in the top 10. People aren't actually visiting your site, you're just getting "shadow traffic". Then you'd go tell advertisers "look, we are one of the biggest sites in the country". We didn't play that game but our competitors did and it was really frustrating. Anyway, the point is their rankings weren't very reliable (this was 8+ years ago, maybe they've gotten better at detecting traffic fraud).

smarx007 5y ago

How does Alexa work? It seems to me it’s hard for anyone except Google Analytics or Cloudflare to build such a service.

lelandfe 5y ago
Handwavey "proprietary methodology" using data from "millions of Internet users using one of many different browser extensions" and "direct sources in the form of sites that have chosen to install the Alexa script."[0] Translation: trust us [0] https://www.alexa.com/about https://www.alexa.com/about
lgats 5y ago
Initially, it was mostly by monitoring the traffic of users of the alexa toolbar, https://www.alexa.com/toolbar https://www.alexa.com/toolbar I think they moved on to more broad data sources, possibly purchasing data from ISPs.
- fragmede 5y ago
  Read between the lines as to how this similar product from Cisco works. http://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/umbrella-static/index.html http://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/umbrella-static/index.html
  - smarx007 5y ago
    Thanks! Goodness, only raised more questions: 1. What is Umbrella? See http://info.opendns.com/rs/033-OMP-861/images/OpenDNS-Global-Network.pdf http://info.opendns.com/rs/033-OMP-861/images/OpenDNS-Global... 2. What is Passive DNS? See https://docs.umbrella.com/investigate-ui/docs/passive-dns https://docs.umbrella.com/investigate-ui/docs/passive-dns
input_sh 5y ago
They used to have its own toolbar that tracked which websites users visit. After that, they've paid other browser add-ons to add their script and some websites voluntarily gave them their data by adding their tracker. It says so right on the about page (warning: unusable on mobile): https://www.alexa.com/about https://www.alexa.com/about
- ralusek 5y ago
  You'd assume that this would give a super biased sample of the population that would skew boomer+.
  - duskwuff 5y ago
    It was always biased, and it's only gotten worse over time as browser toolbars have ceased to be a thing and data collection in browser extensions has been heavily discouraged. I have to wonder if that's one of the reasons they're phasing the product out.
- madaxe_again 5y ago
  Yeah, it was also really handy for figuring out how to attack various web properties, as they frequently indexed administrative pages that were secured through nothing but obscurity, as the toolbar was most popular with amateur (and (im)professional) webmasters. Ah, the good old days.
- bluetwo 5y ago
  Interesting. I wonder if Apple privacy policies killed it. Or if the fact everyone is using the same 10 web sites for everything has eroded the need.
Uehreka 5y ago
Google Analytics would only work on sites that run Google Analytics, which would exclude sites run by the other big tech companies. Alexa worked because their toolbar addon would record every site their users went to, regardless of what was running on the site.
skarz 5y ago
I remember vaguely that they got their metrics from a browser toolbar.
hellbannedguy 5y ago
It wouldn't suprise me if they got their metrics out of their arse. And that would explain the closeure.

lgats 5y ago

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

kingcharles 5y ago
Damn, with that data TikTok.com is ranked #1 O_O
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  The world suddenly makes sense doesn’t it?
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    No a world where TikTok is the #1 website makes no sense at all. Though I suppose it's the sewer of the internet so it has to be everywhere.
    - FpUser 5y ago
      I've never looked at TikTok but I look every once in a while to a user comment section of some pretty reputable world / local news sites. This alone leaves the impression that the world populace is but a bunch of dumb indoctrinated rabid racists and haters.
      - pookeh 5y ago
        My gut feeling is that most are nation-backed trolls.
        FpUser 5y ago
        Way too primitive for those I think.

diebeforei485 5y ago

> Alexa is my go-to place [...] I have never looked into how they get their data Right, this is a problem with all sorts of data sources that provide numbers (and use lots of SEO) but don't talk much about their methodology. CelebrityNetWorth is another example of this.

jjeaff 5y ago
I've come to assume that celebrity net worth sites are mostly just made up numbers. Sometimes you can look up the payout for some specific jobs, but not all, and most of the time, they seem to just ballpark a guess based on that.
- diebeforei485 5y ago
  These website ranking websites like Alexa were also pretty close to ballpark guesses.
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  > I've come to assume that celebrity net worth sites are mostly just made up numbers. That’s how I increased my net worth to 100 million USD. Now I’m using rolling out an unstable coin trading under the symbol UCCT (UCrayCrayToken) backed by my CelebrityNetWorth.com value. I’m going to burn half the tokens soon, so now is a great time to buy tokens from me before they double in value.

tonymet 5y ago

they had a browser toolbar to collect user agent signals

smt88 5y ago

> 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.

cutenewt 5y ago
What's the best alternative for website traffic estimates?
- celestialcheese 5y ago
  SimilarWeb is generally correct - but again, it can be pretty off in some cases. Another one that is sort-of accurate is SEMRush

tomlin 5y ago

How fondly people remember a company that totally installed tracking software into browser add-ons.

cyral 5y ago

I thought they had a browser toolbar/extension which they use to collect data from a very very small subset of internet users, which is probably incredibly biased to a certain audience. (e.g. boomers who don't know how to not install random toolbars when downloading stuff).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

freediver 5y ago

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/ https://tranco-list.eu/ [2] https://kagi.com https://kagi.com

nr2x 5y ago
Alexa was the strongest Tranco input, actually think this is quite bad for them.

Ozzie_osman 5y ago

I started a news aggregator that at the peak was ranked in the top ten Alexa sites in a country (was doing 100M page views / month). Alexa was the standard that people would use to judge how successful a site was.... Until people figured out how to massively game it. For a pretty small sum, you could approach illegal download or porn sites to embed an iframe of your site or do a pop-under ad, and instantly be in the top 10. People aren't actually visiting your site, you're just getting "shadow traffic". Then you'd go tell advertisers "look, we are one of the biggest sites in the country". We didn't play that game but our competitors did and it was really frustrating. Anyway, the point is their rankings weren't very reliable (this was 8+ years ago, maybe they've gotten better at detecting traffic fraud).