Amazon Web Service for Alexa

Question

AWS (Amazon Web Service) provides an API for submitting HTTP requests to Alexa.

This API is called Alexa Web Information Service.

I submit an HTTP request with &Action=UrlInfo and &ResponseGroup=UsageStats.

I then receive an XML within the HTTP response.

Here is the part in the XML which is relevant to my question:

<aws:PageViews>
    <aws:PerMillion>
        <aws:Value>12,345</aws:Value>
        <aws:Delta>+0.67%</aws:Delta>
    </aws:PerMillion>
    <aws:Rank>
        <aws:Value>1</aws:Value>
        <aws:Delta>0</aws:Delta>
    </aws:Rank>
    <aws:PerUser>
        <aws:Value>12.34</aws:Value>
        <aws:Delta>-0.56%</aws:Delta>
    </aws:PerUser>
</aws:PageViews>

The documentation for the API is at http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AlexaWebInfoService/latest/.

A description for the specific parameters that I am using in my HTTP request, can be found under API Reference / Actions / UrlInfo, but I have not been able to find any details on any of the above tags.

Does anyone happen to know the exact meaning of each of these tags? :

• PerMillion / Value

• PerMillion / Delta

• Rank / Value

• Rank / Delta

• PerUser / Value

• PerUser / Delta

Thanks

Answer 1

Regarding aws:PerMillion

The PageViews PerMillion stat shows "out of every million pageviews made by all users on the Internet today how many pageviews are made on this site?" The daily pageviews number is then averaged over the specified time period.

https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=578614

and aws:PerUser

it is "per million pageviews on the internet"

https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=265890

Answer 2

I've annotated a sample result with my understanding of the return values based on Treton's answer:

 <aws:TopSites>
  <!-- Country in which the sites in this result have been grouped. -->
  <aws:Country>
    <aws:CountryName>Australia</aws:CountryName>
    <aws:CountryCode>AU</aws:CountryCode>
    <!-- Total number of sites Alexa is tracking in this country -->
    <aws:TotalSites>22052</aws:TotalSites>
    <!-- List of sites in result. -->
    <aws:Sites>
      <aws:Site>
        <aws:DataUrl>google.com</aws:DataUrl>
        <aws:Country>
          <!-- Rank within country (eg 10 = 10th most popular site in country). -->
          <aws:Rank>1</aws:Rank>
          <!-- -->
          <aws:Reach>
            <!--
            Out of every million users on the internet today, how many visited
            this site?
            @see https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=578614
            -->
            <aws:PerMillion>801700</aws:PerMillion>
          </aws:Reach>
          <aws:PageViews>
            <!--
            Out of every million pageviews by all users on the internet
            today, how many were made to this site?
            -->
            <aws:PerMillion>267200</aws:PerMillion>
            <!--
            What is the average (mean) number of pageviews to this site, per
            user, per day?
            -->
            <aws:PerUser>14.94</aws:PerUser>
          </aws:PageViews>
        </aws:Country>
        <!-- Rank within whole world.  -->
        <aws:Global>
          <aws:Rank>1</aws:Rank>
        </aws:Global>
      </aws:Site>
    </aws:Sites>
  </aws:Country>
</aws:TopSites>