San Francisco-headquartered website traffic metrics company Alexa has recently opened its official Chinese website, Cn.alexa.com.

The website is currently undergoing beta test and only corresponding contents in the "Site Info" column of its English official website are now available. The website states it will continue to add new contents to provide better services to the Chinese online analytics market.

In addition, the company states that Cn.alexa.com is the only Chinese official website for Alexa Internet, as there are many analytics sites in China that masquerade as official Alexa sites.

Alexa has a lurid and uneasy history in China. Its rankings can be tweaked by outsiders, so many reputable analysts have dropped Alexa from their repertoire. A lower Alexa number means a supposed greater level of traffic, and the traffic drops off logarithmically — minor changes can make a site ride a rollercoaster within Alexa's statistics. In 2006, Chinese weblog provider Bokee.com and Internet news provider Homeway were removed from the Alexa rankings after Alexa said that each had cheated and tried to boost their rankings by "illegal" means.

Founded in April 1996 and headquartered in San Francisco, Alexa is a subsidiary of Amazon.com. It provides free web traffic metrics, top sites lists, site demographics, and hot urls.