Alexa.com Goes Away – The outdated search engine optimisation device used to find out Google rankings

In the early 2000s, we covered a lot here about Alexa, an Amazon-related website ranking service. SEOs are using it the way they used PageRank and how they are now using Domain Authority or other third-party website measurement services. Well, Amazon is finally shutting down Alexa.com.

I am actually a little surprised this news got so much attention because the service was hardly used. Alexa is owned by Amazon, and Amazon said it will close on May 1, 2022. Alexa was introduced 25 years ago in April 1996 as web traffic data, global rankings, and other information to over 30 million websites.

Here is the reference to Alexa.com:

The last thing I wrote about Alexa was in 2019 when we said again Alexa is not used for Google ranking Purposes. It’s a myth we’ve been writing about ever since 2004 – no joke. SEOs would look for ways to inflate the Alexa rank I thought it was something Effects on PageRank or something.

I even joked about it with Google’s John Mueller, who wrote a poem about it going away:

Imagine there is no Alexarank
It’s easy if you try
No DA among us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Live for the moment.

Imagine there is no AR
It is not difficult
Nothing to link or pay for
And no PR either
Imagine all the websites
Live in peace.

– 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) December 9, 2021

The funny thing is when I got my April Fool’s Day joke for the 2003 or so Google PageRank prediction tool, I used Amazon’s Alexa rank as part of the algorithm to figure out what your next PageRank score will look like. I have no idea if this tool still works by the way – it never actually worked because it was a joke.

So it’s good that it is going away … I think mostly because of the confusion it might have with Alexa, the voice search service, and this one – both owned by Amazon. But also for the old SEO myths around it.

Forum discussion at Twitter and WebmasterWorld.