How AWS Data Exchange can help with the End of Life of Alexa Web Information Service

Alexa Web Information Service (AWIS) is an API that can be used to create innovative web solutions and services based on a vast repository of information about the web. Developers, researchers, and website owners can incorporate information about websites directly into their own websites or services. Users can access website traffic data, related links, and a wide variety of other functionality and data. AWIS is set to be terminated in December 2022. This could affect users who are gathering information about websites including the ranking, traffic history and understanding the effects of specific events on website traffic. This could be solved by various third-party solutions hosted in AWS Data Exchange to fill the void left by AWIS.

Similarweb gives businesses in the digital space unique insights that enable them to optimize their strategies and accelerate growth. Their mission is to empower businesses to make better decisions by equipping them with the insights they need to succeed in the digital world. They provide a digital intelligence platform that gives visibility into any website, app, and industry in the world. That’s why over half of the Fortune 500 corporations rely on Similarweb data.

For a decade, Similarweb has pioneered a unique, multi-dimensional approach to measure online traffic. Similarweb’s unique data science converts noisy online data into a clear signal, normalizing all digital sources into a single view - enabling a fair comparison between sites to sites and apps to apps. Tens of billions of digital signals collected each day turn into an ultra-high-resolution picture of everything happening online. Fueled by AI algorithms perfected by a team of over 200 top data scientists and 50 PhDs.

• Direct Measurement - Millions of websites and apps choose to share their first-party analytics with Similarweb.
• Contributors Network - Collection of consumer products that aggregate anonymous device behavioral data.
• Public Data Extraction - Advanced algorithmic engine that captures and indexes public data from billions of websites and apps.
• Partnerships - Global network of organizations that collect “digital signals” across the Internet.

Similarweb has listed multiple products in AWS Data Exchange to help developers and researchers uncover rank for any website on a global, regional and industry level. You can measure the engagement a website has via Desktop page views and referrals. You can also obtain metadata of a website like the website description.

Similarweb Premium Free allows you to do all of this for free for one month. You can evaluate the product and make sure it fits your needs. This product provides the following actions:

1. Global Rank – You can benchmark your website's performance against competitors. You can also track historical changes in performance through this endpoint. For example, bbc.com saw a huge jump from 92 to 76 during January 2022.
2. Category Rank – You can benchmark your website’s competition on industry level across 210 predefined industries. Similarweb takes care of defining and maintaining these categories. You can further drill down a subcategory in a specific industry using this endpoint.
3. Country Rank – You can infer the popularity of your website in a specific country using this endpoint. You can also use this endpoint to figure out which markets are dominated by your competition.
   
4. Top Similar Rank sites – This endpoint provides lists of websites, ordered by Traffic Rank globally. You can find the top 3, 5 or 100 websites based on traffic.
   
5. Website Description – This endpoint allows you to collect metadata of a website of your choice.
6. Desktop Referrals – Similar to AWIS’s SiteLinkingIn, this endpoint returns the referring websites for the given domain, the amount of traffic share per referrer and number of referral visits. You can choose how many top referring sites you want to analyze and find out where your competitors are receiving the most traffic from.
7. Desktop Page Views – Similar to AWIS’s TrafficHistory, this endpoint provides you the historical page views of a website per country. You can use this information to correlate website traffic with major events in your website.
   

So, if you are looking into migrating to a different solution due to the end of life of AWIS or looking to make data driven decisions on your website, go ahead and subscribe to this product in AWS Data Exchange. You can learn how to subscribe to an API product in this user guide or by working through this self-service workshop.

In this blog post, I walked you through the alternatives available in AWS Data Exchange as Alexa Web Information Service is nearing its end of life. To learn more about the service, see AWS Data Exchange.