Amazon blocks Statsaholic
It is happening again - this time worse. Amazon/Alexa is trying to shut down Statsaholic (formerly Alexaholic) by blocking the Alexa graphs. Statsaholic is a multiple site traffic comparison service that became popular lately for Seth Godin’s web 2.0 picks.
Statsholic responds in this way:
David vs. Goliath - On March 18, in response to legal action taken against me by Alexa over the use of their name in my domain alexaholic.com, I changed the name of this website to Statsaholic. Now, on March 23, Amazon/Alexa is still trying to shut this website down, this time by blocking their traffic graphs if you’re viewing them from this site (even though thousands of other websites, and Alexa’s own free widgets, serve their traffic graphs in exactly the same manner). I’m doing my best to keep the site up with some creative coding, but it’s not looking good for the little guy here. If you see a white box where the graph should be, that’s Alexa blocking us again. It appears that the decision makers at Amazon think mashups and creative use of their api is fine, unless you get successful with it.
The last point seems very true. Statsholic had started the comprehensive trafic comparison features much before Alexa itself (using Alexa’s own data). But it seems like Amazon’s API’s are not as open as they advertise it to be.
RIght now no clarification is available from Alexa / Amazon regarding this issue.
Update: It seems like Statsaholic wants to switch to other traffic data providers. Compete.com and Quantcast.com have already shown interest in providing their data.
It’s an arms race now to keep up with their referer blocking. If any webmasters would like to help, put up a page with content exactly like this one:
http://whometrics.com/graph.html
and send the url to ron at statsaholic dot com. Thanks!
what’s the point of the graph.html ? They just don’t want you to make money off of it with ads, because they feel they could release a new version of their site rather then have you compete with them. Think of it this way, they’d rather crush you then have you as competition. Fair play or not, I’d suggest you make the transition to some other sort of tracking system. Also maybe they think you’re using too much of their bandwidth, try to get a formal complaint from them - it’ll give you more grounds for your case. Good luck.
I don’t really blame them. Alexaholic was getting a ton of traffic by just reposting Alexa data with a slightly prettier UI. I’m guessing that’s not really the intended use of the API.
Ron, I’d totally help you if I could, but that page appears to be empty…?
Not much use putting it up then, is there?
Or is there?
Save the page itself and upload it. Take a look at the source code of that page.
i’ve started a little tumblelog with links to stories that will help raise awareness to causes like yours. It’s time for everyone to realize it’s about ht eindividual not the big media corps.
http://kilby.tumblr.com
Who really cares? Nobody uses the alexa toolbar. What’s the fuss all about. The only people who use it are the people who care about the stats. Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
[…] TechCrunch, Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress), WebForth, and Michelle MacPhearson have covered the story so far. If you blog about it, contact me and I’ll link to you here. If you’re a member of the press, call me for an interview. […]
I think that this is going to continue for awhile…and does it only have to do with the size/ bandwidth of statsaholic. I bet if it was getting no attention that they wouldn’t care..
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Shredders
[…] In this comment from late last month that showed up on Webforth: Amazon blocks Statsaholic, for example, Ron Hornbaker of Statsaholic begs people to help him get around Alexa’s referrer-based blocking: Ron Hornbaker March 24th, 2007 04:44 […]