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Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California -based Subsidiary Company of Amazon.com that is best known for operating a Website that provides information on the Web Traffic to other websites. Alexa collects information from users who have installed an " Alexa Toolbar ," allowing them to provide statistics on web site traffic, as well as lists of related links. OPERATIONS AND HISTORY In 1999 , Alexa was acquired by Amazon.com for about $250 million in Amazon Stock .3 The company's premises are in Building 37 of the Presidio Of San Francisco . Alexa began a partnership with Google in Spring 2002 , and with the Open Directory Project in January 2003 .4 Live Search replaced Google as a provider of search results in May 2006 .5 In September 2006, they began using their own Search Platform to serve results. In December 2006, they released ''Alexa Image Search''. Built in-house, it is the first major application to be built on their Web Platform. Today, Alexa is primarily a Search Engine , an Open Directory-based Web Directory , and a supplier of site information. Alexa also provides "site info" for the A9.com search engine. In December , Alexa changed their API to require comparisons be limited to 3 sites, reduced size embedded graphs be shown using Flash , and mandatory embedded BritePic ads.6 In April 2007 , Alexa V. Hornbaker was filed to stop Trademark Infringement by the Statsaholic service.7 In the lawsuit, Alexa alleges that Hornbaker is stealing traffic graphs for profit, and that the primary purpose of his site is to display graphs that are generated by Alexa's servers.89 Hornbaker removed the term Alexa from his service name on March 19 2007 .10 CONCERNS OVER ALEXA RANK INFORMATION AND THE ALEXA TOOLBAR Alexa ranks sites based on visits from users of its ), there are several third-party extensions for Mozilla Firefox .
There is some controversy over how representative Alexa's user base is of typical Internet behavior. If Alexa's user base is a fair Statistical Sample of the internet user population (e.g., a random sample of sufficient size), Alexa's ranking should be quite accurate. In reality, not much is known about the sample and possible Sampling Bias es. Alexa itself notes several examples ( here and here ) A known source of bias is the self-selecting, opt-in nature of Alexa traffic tracking software installation, but the significance of this bias on rankings is not reported. Alexa.com: What is traffic rank? Another concern is whether Alexa ratings are easily manipulated. Some webmasters claim that they can significantly improve the Alexa ranking of less popular sites by making them the default page, by Exchanging Web Traffic with other webmasters, and by requiring their users to install the Alexa toolbar; however, such claims are often anecdotal and are offered without statistics or other evidence. SEE ALSO Competitors in the internet market research space include Compete, Inc , ComScore , Hitwise , Nielsen//NetRatings , Netcraft , Ranking.com and Quantcast . REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS
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