Alexa.com’s web information business is built on the notion that timely, relevant information is essential to a positive web experience. In support of this goal, Alexa has been rapidly expanding its business by offering a variety of web services to its customers. Using APIs, Alexa’s customers are able to access the vast information that Alexa has collected from the web and use it in innovative new ways.
To develop, launch, and manage their web-scale services quickly and cost effectively, Alexa uses the core infrastructure services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS)—Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, and Amazon SQS. These services provide the scalable foundation for Alexa’s high volume web services.
One popular offering is the Alexa Site Thumbnail service which enables developers to embed thumbnail images of web site home pages directly into their own web site or application. To power this web service, Alexa uses Amazon S3 to store and deliver millions of thumbnail images and uses Amazon SimpleDB to automatically index and efficiently query the stored images. Currently, Alexa stores over 12 million objects in SimpleDB, and performs over 5 million queries against it daily.