Alexa internet je sesterský projekt serveru Amazon.com. Alexa sbírá informace od uživatelů, kteří si nainstalovali Alexa toolbar, pomocí které se formulují statistiky o návštěvnosti stránek a zpětných odkazů. Sídlo společnosti se nachází v Kalifornii (USA).
Historie
Společnost byla založena v roce 1996 Brewsterem Kahlem a Brucem Gilliatem.[1] V této době toolbar, který pomoci algoritmu, jenž byl formulován pomocí jednotlivého uživatelé, napovídal uživateli, co by měl dále navštívit za server. Mimo to, o každém navštíveném serveru vygeneroval kontext, na kterém byly informace o vlastníkovi serveru, počet stránek na serveru, počet odkazů směřujících na jiné servery a informace o aktualizaci serveru.[2] Inženýři společnosti Alexa, za pomocí Internetového archivu, vytvořili Wayback Machine (tj.: stroj času).[3] Kromě toho, Alexa poskytuje archivu internetu vyhledávací roboty. V roce 1999 byla společnost Alexa prodána za akcie Amazonu v hodnotě 250 mil dolarů společnosti Amazon.com.[4]
Na jaře roku 2002 Alexa začala spolupracovat s Google a v lednu 2003 Open Directory.[5] Nicméně v roce 2006 zaměnila Windows Live Search společnost Google jako poskytovatel vyhledávacích informací. V září 2006 začali používat svojí vlastní vyhledávací platformu. V prosinci 2006 oficiálně vyšel Alexa image search. Je to první velká aplikace postavená na vlastní platformě. Dnes Alexa funguje jako internetový vyhledávač, jejímž základem je internetový katalog Open Directory, a taky jako poskytovatel informací o serverech. Alexa také dodává informace o stránkách pro vyhledávač A9.com.[6]
V prosinci 2005 otevřela svůj obrovský vyhledávací index mimopodnikovým programům pomocí webových služeb a API. Lze je využit při zřízení alternativních vyhledávačů, které by mohly běžet buď na serveru Alexa, anebo na vlastních serverech.[7]
Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com which provides commercial web traffic data. Founded as an independent company in 1996, Alexa was acquired by Amazon in 1999. Its toolbar collects data on browsing behavior and transmits it to the Alexa website, where it is stored and analyzed, forming the basis for the company's web traffic reporting. According to its website, as of 2014, Alexa provides traffic data, global rankings and other information on 30 million websites,[3] and its website is visited by over 6 million people monthly.[2]
Operations and history
Alexa Internet was founded in 1996 by American web entrepreneurs Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat.[4] The company's name was chosen in homage to the Library of Alexandria,[5] drawing a parallel between the largest repository of knowledge in the ancient world and the potential of the Internet to become a similar store of knowledge.
The company offered a toolbar that gave Internet users suggestions on where to go next, based on the traffic patterns of its user community. Alexa also offered context for each site visited: to whom it was registered, how many pages it had, how many other sites pointed to it, and how frequently it was updated.[6]
Alexa's operation includes archiving of webpages as they are crawled. This database served as the basis for the creation of the Internet Archive accessible through the Wayback Machine.[7] In 1998, the company donated a copy of the archive, two terabytes in size, to the Library of Congress.[5] Alexa continues to supply the Internet Archive with Web crawls.
In 1999, as the company moved away from its original vision of providing an "intelligent" search engine, Alexa was acquired by Amazon.com for approximately US$250 million in Amazon stock.[8] Alexa began a partnership with Google in early 2002, and with the web directory DMOZ in January 2003.[1] In May 2006, Amazon replaced Google with Live Search as a provider of search results.[9] In December 2006, Amazon released Alexa Image Search. Built in-house, it was the first major application to be built on the company's Web platform.
In December 2005, Alexa opened its extensive search index and Web-crawling facilities to third party programs through a comprehensive set of Web services and APIs. These could be used, for instance, to construct vertical search engines that could run on Alexa's own servers or elsewhere. In May 2007, Alexa changed their API to require comparisons to be limited to three sites, reduced the size of embedded graphs shown using Flash, and added mandatory embedded BritePic advertisements.
In April 2007, the lawsuit Alexa v. Hornbaker was filed to stop trademark infringement by the Statsaholic service.[10] In the lawsuit, Alexa alleged that Hornbaker was stealing traffic graphs for profit, and that the primary purpose of his site was to display graphs that were generated by Alexa's servers.[11] Hornbaker removed the term Alexa from his service name on March 19, 2007.[12]
On November 27, 2008, Amazon announced that Alexa Web Search was no longer accepting new customers, and that the service would be deprecated or discontinued for existing customers on January 26, 2009.[13] Thereafter, Alexa became a purely analytics-focused company.
On March 31, 2009, the Alexa website underwent a major redesign, offering new web traffic metrics, including average page views per each individual user, bounce rate, and user time on site.[14] In the following weeks, Alexa added further features, including visitor demographics, clickstream and search traffic statistics.[15] These new features were introduced in order to compete with other web analytics services, such as Compete.com and Quantcast.[16]
Tracking
Toolbar
Alexa ranks sites based primarily on tracking a sample set of internet traffic — users of its toolbar for the Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers.[17][18] The Alexa Toolbar includes a popup blocker, a search box, links to Amazon.com and the Alexa homepage, and the Alexa ranking of the site that the user is visiting. It also allows the user to rate the site and view links to external, relevant sites.
In early 2005, Alexa stated that there had been 10 million downloads of the toolbar, though the company did not provide statistics about active usage. The Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer 7 has previously been flagged as malware by Microsoft Defender.[19] A third-party-supplied plugin for the Firefox browser[20] served as the only solution after Amazon abandoned its A9 toolbar.[21] On July 16, 2007, Alexa released an official toolbar for Firefox called Sparky.[22] Originally, webpages were only ranked amongst users who had the Alexa Toolbar installed, and could be biased if a specific audience subgroup was reluctant to take part in the rankings. This caused some controversy over how representative Alexa's user base was of typical Internet behavior,[23] especially for less-visited sites.[18] In 2007, Michael Arrington provided examples of Alexa rankings known to contradict data from the comScore web analytics service, including ranking YouTube ahead of Google.[24]
On April 16, 2008, many users reported dramatic shifts in their Alexa rankings. Alexa confirmed this later in the day with an announcement that they had released an updated ranking system, claiming that they would now take into account more data sources "beyond Alexa Toolbar users".[25][26]
A number of antivirus companies have assessed Alexa's toolbar. Symantec classifies the toolbar as "trackware",[27] while McAfee classifies it as adware, a "Potentially Unwanted Program."[28] McAfee Site Advisor rates the Alexa site as "green", finding "no significant problems" but warning of a "small fraction of downloads ... that some people consider adware or other potentially unwanted programs."[29]
Certified statistics
Using Alexa Pro, website owners can sign up for "certified statistics," which allows Alexa more access to a site's traffic data. Site owners input Javascript code on each page of their website that, if permitted by the user's security and privacy settings, runs and sends traffic data to Alexa, allowing Alexa to display — or not display, depending on the owner's preference — more accurate statistics such as total pageviews and unique pageviews.
