of alexa.com s home page . type wholly owned subsidiary founded april 1 1996 ; 20 years ago 1996 04 01 1 headquarters san francisco california u.s. coordinates 37 48 03 n 122 27 23 w 37.8009 n 122.4565 w 37.8009 ; 122.4565 coordinates 37 48 03 n 122 27 23 w 37.8009 n 122.4565 w 37.8009 ; 122.4565 president andrew ramm 2 key people dave sherfesee vice president 2 industry internet information providers products alexa web search discontinued 2008 alexa toolbar owner amazon.com acquired 1999 website www.alexa.com alexa rank 2 205 august 2016 update 3 type of site web traffic and ranking registration optional available in english current status active alexa internet inc. is a california based company that provides commercial web traffic data and analytics . it is a wholly owned subsidiary of amazon.com . founded as an independent company in 1996 alexa was acquired by amazon in 1999 . its toolbar collects data on browsing behavior and transmits them to the alexa website where they are stored and analyzed forming the basis for the company s web traffic reporting . according to its website alexa provides traffic data global rankings and other information on 30 million websites 4 and as of 2015 its website has been visited by over 6.5 million people monthly . 3 contents 1 operations and history 1.1 1996 1999 1.2 2000 2016 2 tracking 2.1 toolbar 2.2 certified statistics 3 privacy and malware assessments 4 see also 5 references 6 external links operations and history edit 1996 1999 edit alexa internet was founded in april 1996 by american web entrepreneurs brewster kahle and bruce gilliat . 5 the company s name was chosen in homage to the library of alexandria of ptolemaic egypt 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 . 6 alexa initially offered a toolbar that gave internet users suggestions on where to go next based on the traffic patterns of its user community . the company 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 . 7 alexa s operations grew to include archiving of web pages as they are crawled . this database served as the basis for the creation of the internet archive accessible through the wayback machine . 8 in 1998 the company donated a copy of the archive two terabytes in size to the library of congress . 6 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 . 9 2000 2016 edit 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 bing at the time known as windows live search as a provider of search results . 10 in december 2006 amazon released alexa image search . built in house it was the first major application 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 limit comparisons to three websites reduce the size of embedded graphs in flash and add mandatory embedded britepic advertisements . in april 2007 the lawsuit alexa v. hornbaker was filed to stop trademark infringement by the statsaholic service . 11 in the lawsuit alexa alleged that ron 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 . 12 hornbaker removed the term alexa from his service name on march 19 2007 . 13 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 . 14 thereafter alexa became a purely analytics focused company . on march 31 2009 alexa launched a major website redesign . the redesigned site provided new web traffic metrics including average page views per individual user bounce rate and user time on site . 15 in the following weeks alexa added more features including visitor demographics clickstream and search traffic statistics . 16 alexa introduced these new features to compete with other web analytics services . tracking edit toolbar edit 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 . originally web pages 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 controversies over how representative alexa s user base was of typical internet behavior 19 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 . 20 until 2007 a third party supplied plugin for the firefox browser 21 served as the only option for firefox users after amazon abandoned its a9 toolbar . 22 on july 16 2007 alexa released an official toolbar for firefox called sparky . 23 on 16 april 2008 many users reported drastic 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 sources of data beyond alexa toolbar users . 24 25 certified statistics edit using the alexa pro service website owners can sign up for certified statistics which allows alexa more access to a site s traffic data . 26 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 . privacy and malware assessments edit a number of antivirus companies have assessed alexa s toolbar . the toolbar for internet explorer 7 was at one point flagged as malware by microsoft defender . 27 symantec classifies the toolbar as trackware 28 while mcafee classifies it as adware deeming it a potentially unwanted program . 29 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 . 30 though it is possible to delete a paid subscription within an alexa account it is not possible to delete an account that is created at alexa through any web interface though any user may contact the company via its support webpage . 31 see also edit internet portal list of most popular websites list of search engines list of web directories references edit a b about alexa internet . archived from the original on october 7 2009 . retrieved october 9 2009 . a b management . alexa internet . retrieved december 24 2014 . a b alexa.com site info . alexa internet . retrieved july 10 2016 . about . alexa . retrieved january 18 2015 . alexa internet donates archive of the world wide web to library of congress . alexa press release . october 13 1998 . archived from the original on october 13 2009 . retrieved october 9 2009 . a b a gift of the web for the library of congress from alexa internet . october 19 1998 . retrieved october 19 2009 . keith dawson july 28 1997 . alexa internet opens the doors . retrieved october 9 2009 . internet archive faqs . archived from the original on october 21 2009 . retrieved october 9 2009 . adam feuerstein may 21 1999 . e commerce loves street critical path plans encore . san francisco business times . retrieved november 5 2013 . elizabeth montalbano may 1 2006 . amazon dumps google for windows live . infoworld . retrieved november 6 2011 . northern california district federal court case number c 07 01715 rs pdf . retrieved april 19 2007 . alan graham april 18 2007 . amazon sues alexaholic ... everyone loses . zdnet . retrieved march 14 2016 . pete cashmore april 19 2007 . amazon sues statsaholic ... web as platform is bullsh t . mashable . retrieved february 14 2013 . john cook november 27 2008 . amazon pulling plug on alexa web search . archived from the original on december 3 2008 . retrieved november 27 2008 . geoffrey mack march 31 2009 . pardon our dust . alexa internet . retrieved november 6 2011 . geoffrey mack april 14 2009 . more new alexa features demographics clickstream search traffic . retrieved october 9 2009 . technology how and why we crawl the web . alexa . archived from the original on april 2 2014 . retrieved november 6 2011 . a b harold davis 2006 . google advertising tools cashing in with adsense adwords and the google apis . o reilly media . p. 12 . isbn 978 0 596 10108 4 . alistair croll ; se n power 2009 . complete web monitoring watching your visitors performance communities and competitors . o reilly media . p. 38 . isbn 978 0 596 15513 1 . michael arrington . alexa s make believe internet ; alexa says youtube is now bigger than google . alexa is useless . techcrunch . 2007 . retrieved june 21 2013 . searchstatus a search extension for firefox and seamonkey . quirk.biz . retrieved june 24 2013 . home . a9.com . retrieved june 24 2013 . sparky add on for firefox released today . alexa blog . july 16 2007 . retrieved june 24 2013 . alexa announcement . alexa . archived from the original on april 24 2008 . retrieved september 22 2012 . alexa overhauls ranking system . techcrunch . april 16 2008 . retrieved december 1 2012 . alexa pro for digital marketers . alexa . retrieved january 18 2015 . windows defender calls alexa toolbar trojan . tmcnet . march 2 2007 . retrieved june 24 2013 . trackware . alexa symantec.com . february 13 2007 . retrieved july 5 2008 . adware alexa . february 23 2005 . retrieved july 5 2008 . alexa.com web safety ratings . mcafee siteadvisor . september 2007 . retrieved july 5 2008 . delete alexa account . account killer . archived from the original on april 9 2014 . retrieved june 20 2014 . external links edit wikidata has a property p1661 for alexa rank see uses official website v t e amazon.com people current jeff bezos tony hsieh christopher north werner vogels gregg zehr former rick dalzell brian mcbride david risher ram shriram tom szkutak brian valentine facilities amazon tower i amazon tower ii products and services websites a9.com abebooks