Alexa.com has been decommissioned by Amazon. While it may not be obvious at first, the decision to discontinue the popular web traffic analysis and website ranking service has an impact on the cybersecurity industry.
When visiting alexa.com, users are now greeted with an end-of-service notice stating that the site will be retired on May 1, 2022.
Alexa was founded in 1996 and bought out by Amazon in 1999. Amazon has announced that the service will be phased out in December 2021.
On December 15, 2022, the Alexa Top Sites and Web Information Service APIs will be decommissioned. Amazon did not provide any details about why Alexa was shut down, only stating that it was a “difficult decision.”
Many in the cybersecurity industry have used the Alexa Top 1 million list to analyse the security practises and posture of the world’s most popular websites.
DomainTools announced in late April that it would generate its own list, and that the best approach would be to combine four types of data.
The data will be combined into a single list using Tranco, an average methodology. Security vendors are frantically searching for a new external source of traffic data for their clients.
