Alexa Web Information Service FAQs

General Information

Q: What is the Alexa Web Information Service (AWIS)?

The Alexa Web Information Service allows developers to programmatically access Alexa’s vast repository of information about the traffic and structure of the web.

Q: What can I do with the Alexa Web Information Service?

Any application that links to or displays information about web sites can be enhanced with data from the Alexa Web Information Service. What you can do is only limited by your imagination; some ideas include:

• Using the URL Information action to provide traffic information about web sites on your search result pages
• Using the Browse Category action to build a web directory on your web site

Q: Who should use the Alexa Web Information Service?

Any developer who can build applications or services based on XML can use the Alexa Web Information Service. The service is designed for developers who wish to display data about specific web sites, and the internet, as a whole, in their applications and web sites.

Q: How much does the Alexa Web Information Service cost?

Pay only for what you use. The charge is $0.00015 per request ($0.15 for 1,000 requests)

Q: How do I get started with AWIS?

To use AWIS, you will need to register for the Alexa Web Information service. Visit the service detail page and click on the “Sign up for Web Service” button to get started. You can then refer to our technical documentation to begin building with AWIS.

Q: How can I get a list of all top web sites on the internet?

The list of top web sites is available through the Alexa Top Sites web service.

URL Information Action

Q: What is the URL Information action?

URL Information offers access to Alexa’s information about web sites, including Traffic Rank, Related Links, Contact Info, Site Stats and more. The URL Information action is fully described in the documentation.

Q: Where does Alexa get the traffic data?

Alexa gets its traffic data, including reach, page views and rank information, from a global panel of web users. The panel is used as a statistical sample of Internet usage to extrapolate overall traffic patterns and web usage information. The panel consists of Alexa Toolbar users and other sources web usage information. Details about Alexa’s traffic data can be found on Alexa.com.

Q: How reliable is the traffic data?

Alexa calculates traffic information for tens of millions of sites. However, the top 500 sites get almost 50% of all web traffic and compete for an increasingly smaller slice of the web traffic pie. Due to statistical limitations for the remaining millions of sites, we are unable to provide accurate traffic data for sites not within the top 100,000. Learn more.

Q: How many sites are ranked?

Alexa knows about tens of millions of web sites; however, the vast majority of these appear to get no traffic at all. During any given three month period, Alexa can rank approximately 8 million unique sites based on the available traffic information.

Q: How are related links and categories determined?

Alexa Internet uses crawling, archiving, categorizing, and data mining techniques to build the Related Links lists for millions of web URLs. One technique used is to analyze links on the crawled pages to find related sites. The day-to-day use of the Alexa service also helps build and refine the data. By looking at high-level trends within the millions of URL “paths” created by Alexa users, we can deduce relationships between web sites. For example, if many users go directly from site A to site B, the two sites are likely to be related.

Please note that since the relationships between sites are based on strength, Related Links lists are not necessarily balanced. Site A may appear in the list for Site B, but Site B may not be in the list for Site A. Generally, this happens when the number of sites with strong relationships is greater than ten, or when sites do not have similar enough content.

Q: How does Alexa obtain contact information for web sites?

The site owners, addresses, and phone numbers shown in the Alexa service are aggregated directly from InterNIC, Whois.net, Ripe.net, Apnic.net and other sites that are in the business of registering domain names. This domain registration information is publicly available to any web user. E-mail addresses may be gathered from the actual web site or from domain registration information. If the contact information for your URL is wrong, or you would like to have it unlisted in the Alexa service, you can change it at Alexa.com. Once there, simply enter your URL and follow the instructions. Please note that it can take up to four weeks for these changes to take effect.

Q: Where does Alexa get the site descriptions and titles for sites?

Site titles and descriptions are taken directly from the Open Directory (http://www.dmoz.org). If you would like your title or description changed, you can change it at the Alexa Contact Information Editor. This will update your description on Alexa but you might also wish contact the Open Directory directly in order to update the source description.

Q: How often is the URL Information data updated?

In the URL Information action, the traffic data is updated daily. Most other information in the URL Information, are updated every two months.

Browse Category Action

Q: What is the Alexa Browse Category?

Together, the Browse Category and Browse Listings actions provide a web directory service. The categories and listings are based on the Open Directory, www.dmoz.org. Alexa updates the browse category nightly to incorporate any changes made to the contents of the Open Directory, and to update the popularity information.

Q: How is the Alexa directory different from the Open Directory?

The Alexa directory is based on the Open Directory. Alexa edits and enhances the directory by adding traffic and reviews data. For any given category, Alexa provides the 5 most popular sites, related products and a “reviewers rave” site when available. You may sort sites within a category by popularity (traffic) or reviews.

Q: Is the Browse Category action a search engine?

No. The Browse Category action only offers a browse feature. For any given browse node (category), the service responds with subcategories, related categories, top sites within that category, and more.

Sites Linking In Action

Q: What is Sites Linking In?

The Sites Linking In action returns a list of web sites linking to a given web site. Within each domain linking into the web site, only a single link – the one with the highest page-level traffic – is returned. The data is updated once every two months.

Historical Traffic Data Action

Q: What is the Historical Traffic Data action?

The Historical Traffic Data action returns day-by-day Alexa Traffic Rank, Reach per Million, and Page Views per Million for the past 5 years. This same data is used to produce the traffic graphs found on alexa.com. Data is available dating back through September, 2001.

Crawl Meta Data Action

Q: What is the Crawl Meta Data action?

The Crawl Meta Data action provides information about specific URLs contained in Alexa’s crawl of the web. The meta data includes return codes, links, size of the page, checksum, images, frames and more. Updates occur following the completion of Alexa’s Web-wide crawl cycle, which takes approximately two months to complete.