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SimilarWeb, Tranco, others to gain prominence as Alexa retires service after 25 years

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SimilarWeb, Tranco, others to gain prominence as Alexa retires service after 25 years

As Amazon’s web traffic and ranking platform, Alexa, looks to retire its popular product in May 2022, new and existing competitors strategize to negotiate the distribution of its market share.

It is rumoured that Amazon is retiring Alexa as it appears that cost of running the site do not compliment its generated revenue.

Reputed as a global website ranking system and analysis tool, Alexa was founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, and was bought by Amazon in 1999 for $250 million in stock.

Amazon’s move to retire Alexa makes it another surprising market exit by an American tech giant, coming three years after Google, in a similar fashion, terminated its Google+ product in 2019 on the account of low usage and challenges involved in maintaining the heavily invested product.

It is, however, speculated that the tech giant bought the platform to initially gain insights into the market data of its competitors, and might have long achieved its purpose to building its ecommerce platform, Amazon, to a global market leader status.

Coming rather as shock for many, the development coincidentally follows the exit of Jeff Bezos as the CEO of the multinational tech company.

Ripples Nigeria in 2021 reported that Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, officially stepped down as the company’s chief executive, handing over the role to Andy Jassy, a business executive previously heading Amazon Web Services since its inception in 2003.

With May 2022 about 60 days to the eventual retirement, the team, in a statement available on its website, has urged subscribers to harvest their data before the future clampdown, adding that the company had stopped accepting new subscription charges since December.

The statement reads in part: “Twenty-five years ago, we founded Alexa Internet. 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.

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“Thank you for making us your go-to resource for content research, competitive analysis, keyword research, and so much more.

“Alexa.com stopped offering new subscriptions on December 8, 2021 UTC. Customers with existing subscriptions will continue to have access to their subscriptions until May 1, 2022 UTC.

“After that, customers will no longer have access to Alexa.com.”

New times ahead:

The retirement from the website ranking space will give alternative products (such as SimilarWeb, Rankranger, Tranco, ahrefs, SEMrush, etc.) the opportunity to compete for the market leader status as Alexa takes a bow.

The development will further impact digital marketers, bloggers, content developers, as well as DevOps as they readjust to migrate to alternative service providers.

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