The Numbers

Alexa Internet is best known for three things:

1. A neat little browser accessory that reveals stats, domain ownership and other non-obvious information about Web sites
2. Regularly backing up the entire contents of the Web (including a "sculpture" of tapes donated to the Library of Congress in 1997)
3. Keeping site traffic and other interesting statistics
4. Selling to Amazon.com for something like $250 million

The Alexa browser accessory isn't yet available for Linux; but that didn't stop us from using a non-Linux machine (we will go to any lengths to get a story) to tally up some comparative numbers for various Linux-related Web sites (often following Alexa's handy 'related links' feature). The results are below. We'll leave the interpretations up to you.

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Here are visits to the same sites. —

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Notes: Numbers were collected on 5/13/99. "Vists" are accumulated over the previous six months of activity by Alexa users, nearly all of which are on Windows clients. "Links in" are from surveys of pages served across the entire Web. Some sites, such as Scripting.com and Slackware, contain high percentages of links and visits that are not Linux-related. And one major site, Linux.com, went live from VA Linux Systems only in the last few days of the survey period. A follow-up survey on 6/1 showed a 24.6 percent increase in visits to that site.