Twenty-five years after its inception, Amazon announced the decision to retire its popular web traffic analysis and ranking platform, Alexa.com. The beloved analytics tool, widely used by publishers, bloggers, and web owners for decades, will be decommissioned on May 1, 2022.
What is Alexa.com?
Not to be confused with the Alexa voice assistant, Alexa.com (officially known as Alexa Internet) was a San Francisco-based web analytics company founded in 1996. It quickly rose to fame in the digital community thanks to its global ranking system, which analyzed web traffic data from its partners to list the most popular internet companies. Where exactly a company appears on this list is referred to as its “Alexa Rank”, with lower ranking numbers signifying the highest traffic (i.e. Google is always #1).
Alexa was later acquired by Amazon in 1999 – 15 years before the tech giant and retailer launched its Smart Speaker of the same name.
The best Alexa.com alternatives
Whatever the reason for the shut-down, it’s clear that digital marketers who heavily rely on Alexa's insights need an alternative. If that's you, not to worry – below, we've compiled a list of similar analytics tools you can start using today.
1. Similarweb
Is a simple web traffic comparison all you need? Start with Similarweb. With Similarweb, you can view the region, country, and category ranks of millions of websites, along with engagement and geo-specific traffic metrics.
If your primary use case for Alexa.com was comparing website traffic, Similarweb is a solid alternative.
2. Semrush
Semrush is a popular content marketing platform with powerful tools for website analysis and SEO. Launched in 2008, it has an extensive set of features that help marketers with SEO, market research, and paid search campaigns.
Semrush is trusted by millions of digital marketers around the world, and is a viable alternative to Alexa.com for keyword research and traffic analytics.
3. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a household name in the digital marketing community, and another popular substitute for Alexa.com. SEO experts love the Ahrefs platform for its ability to monitor web rankings and assist with optimization, competitive analysis, and keyword research.
Ahrefs is widely-recognized for its quality data metrics; the platform monitors nearly 12 billion keywords across 10 different search engines.
4. SpyFu
Another Alexa.com alternative worth checking out is SpyFu. SpyFu lets you track keyword rankings, view PPC keywords of competitors, check organic competitors, check competitor backlinks by keyword, and much more.
Once you have gathered the data, you can choose to export them as an Excel file, CSV, or PDF. While the free version has a decent set of features, the premium subscription gives you unlimited access to data, data exports, over a decade of historical data, and API access.
5. Ubersuggest
For those new to the world of web traffic rankings, consider beginner-friendly platform Ubersuggest. With Ubersuggest, you get domain overviews, a dashboard of top-ranking pages, keyword suggestions, content ideas, and backlink history.
While the service is not as feature-packed as others on this list, Ubersuggest remains a solid choice thanks to its clean UI and capabilities within its free version.
6. Serpstat
If you're looking for a tool to assist with keyword research, domains analysis, rank tracking, site audit, and competitor analysis, Serpstat is another option. Similar to the aforementioned Semrush and Ahrefs, Serpstat provides all of the standard features you would expect from an SEO tool – however, its data volume is not quite as vast as the competition.
7. Intricately
If you're a cloud seller who has historically leveraged Alexa.com to target accounts based on Alexa Rank, look no further than Intricately for an alternative. Not only does our Global Sensor Network monitor the traffic distribution of over 9 million businesses, our Smart Lists function as custom search engines that allow sellers to filter accounts by products, providers, use cases, spend, and, you guessed it – Alexa Rank. Contact us to learn more.
The bottom line
For over two decades, Alexa.com has been one of the most convenient methods of analyzing web traffic. While its retirement is a blow to the digital community, there are feature-packed alternatives that remain to help fill the gap. If you're a marketer looking for tools similar to Alexa.com, we hope this guide helped!
