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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsAmazon retired Alexa Internet’s domain-ranking service in 2022, ending a familiar source of web-popularity data that cybersecurity teams had used as one clue when distinguishing legitimate domains from threats. No single public list is a drop-in replacement: rankings reflect their data sources, networks, regions and measurement periods, so security teams should choose evidence that fits their own users and workflow.
What happened to Alexa rankings?
Alexa Internet’s domain-ranking service—not Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant—announced its retirement on December 8, 2021, according to a 2024 Internet Measurement Conference paper. The paper says the Alexa Top 1 Million list was scheduled to retire on May 1, 2022, and that the web portal did retire that day. Its CSV endpoint reportedly remained active and updating until 2023. Akamai also dates the announcement to December 2021 and the permanent retirement to May 2022.
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The service had published domain-popularity rankings for more than 25 years. The available sources establish the retirement and its operational context, but not Amazon’s reason for closing the service.
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2024 Internet Measurement Conference paper · Akamai, “Improving Popularity Rankings for Better Threat Intelligence, Part 1”
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Why cybersecurity teams used a popularity list
A domain’s popularity can help indicate that it is likely legitimate, which matters when security teams maintain blocklists. Blocking a heavily used legitimate resource can disrupt customers, employees or internet subscribers. Akamai’s researchers describe using Alexa data as one input when evaluating domains and reducing false positives—not as a standalone test of safety. They also describe using other allowlisting controls and validating artifacts with both malicious and legitimate signals. As Akamai authors Noy Aizenberg and Congcong Xing put it, “Popularity rank is an important factor in assessing the legitimacy of domains.”
Popularity alone does not establish that a domain is safe. A frequently visited domain can still be compromised or malicious, while a little-known domain can be legitimate. Treat a rank as supporting context alongside threat intelligence and other controls.
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Why one replacement list may not fit every security team
Rankings describe the traffic their collectors observe; different collection methods can produce different lists. Akamai cautions that a worldwide list may not reflect popularity in a particular country, and that rankings based mainly on HTTP transactions may miss DNS server domains. A global web-traffic ranking may therefore be a poor proxy for what is common on a regional network or in a DNS-focused security workflow.
Infoblox says it stopped using Alexa years earlier because it found statistical issues that made the lists unreliable for its own use cases. That is Infoblox’s account of its experience, not evidence that Alexa was unsuitable for every organization. Infoblox recommends using a list generated from your own network traffic, or from similar traffic, where possible; it says public rankings should inform workflow decisions rather than dictate them.
What Infoblox’s 2022 comparison found—and what it did not
Infoblox published a bounded analysis using a random subset of its active high-threat second-level domains from its Threat Intelligence Data Exchange and public top-one-million lists. The comparison was made on May 27, 2022, and considered approximately 1.6 million domains. The counts below are the number of Infoblox active high-threat domains present in each public list; overlap percentages compare each public list with Infoblox’s own top one million for the named network view.
| Public list | Infoblox active high-threat domains found (2022 analysis) | Overlap with Infoblox DNS forwarding proxy top one million | Overlap with Infoblox BloxOne client top one million |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alexa | 2,118 | 24% | 35% |
| Cisco Umbrella | 1,970 | 19% | 27% |
| Majestic | 4,757 | 26% | 35% |
| Tranco | 6,354 | 34% | 45% |
These are Infoblox’s findings for its described sample and network views, not a universal measure of ranking accuracy, safety or present-day list quality. Infoblox’s broader point was that public lists had limited overlap with its own network views and that domain rankings are network-specific. It also cautioned that combining lists does not automatically make them better or easier to interpret.
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Infoblox’s June 22, 2022 comparison and discussion
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- Define the decision. Identify whether the list will help triage a domain, tune a blocklist, reduce false positives or support another security task. Popularity is supporting evidence, not an automatic allow or block rule.
- Match the data source to the traffic. Ask whether a ranking is based on browser or HTTP observations, DNS observations, or a blend. Those methods can represent different domains and use patterns.
- Check geographic and network fit. Consider whether the list reflects the country, ISP, enterprise or customer population whose activity you need to evaluate. Your own network or a comparable one may be more relevant than a global ranking.
- Check which entities and activity are covered. Determine whether the data captures second-level domains, hostnames or DNS infrastructure, and whether it observes the traffic relevant to your workflow.
- Account for rank uncertainty and change. A single rank can conceal uncertainty or movement over time. Infoblox describes its InfoRanks as providing a likely rank and an interval, one example of presenting uncertainty rather than only a point value.
- Validate before changing enforcement. Combine popularity evidence with threat intelligence and other controls, and consider the cost of a false positive in the environment where a block would apply.
What alternatives are available?
Infoblox discusses Cisco Umbrella, Majestic, Tranco and its own InfoRanks; it says InfoRanks are provided to customers through its service portal. Akamai describes AkaRank, developed using its own data alongside anonymized DNS and partner traffic to create regional popularity views. These are examples of different vendor approaches, not a verified current comparison of availability or terms, and none is established as the definitive successor to Alexa.
For security teams, the practical choice is not simply “Which list replaced Alexa?” It is “Which traffic and entities does this list represent, and how well do they match the decision I need to make?” Public rankings can be useful context, but the evidence should fit the network and be checked against other security signals.
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