The Amazon owned web statistics service Alexa hasn’t been updated for 8 days with no comment from the company. The last date Alexa is showing (at the time of writing) is May 19, with the service usually being two days behind the current date.

I’ve tried contacting Alexa via contact form, email and phone without success, although the last time Alexa had an outage back in January of around 5 days I also wasn’t able to obtain an immediate response, instead waiting 10 days to get one.

Alexa is a service that people love or hate. As perhaps the most open of all the web statistic services, Alexa has served as the leading web site ranking system for years. On the flip side however their reliance until recently on data from Alexa Toolbar users caused many to (rightfully) question the validity of the statistics delivered. Alexa relaunched their statistics tool in April with figures compiled from multiple online sources.

Alexa was founded in 1996 and acquired by Amazon in 1999 for $250 million. Alexa as a business for Amazon really doesn’t deliver a lot, however they’ve likely already written off the $250 million and hence somehow Alexa continued on. We’re not writing Alexa off quite yet as this wouldn’t be the first time they’ve stopped updating statistics, but the silence and length would suggest that something isn’t right. We’ll update the post if Alexa responds.