Chinese B2B e-commerce group Alibaba has completed its acquisition of the traffic statistics service provider CNZZ, marking a crucial step for the group's layout within the e-commerce industry chain.

Early in February 2011, there was rumor on the Internet saying that Alibaba planned to invest USD15 million to acquire CNZZ, a Chinese traffic statistics service provider, but the rumor was denied by chairman of CNZZ, Cai Wensheng. However, an authoritative source recently revealed that the acquisition has been completed.

According to reports in local media, Tao Ran, director for public relations of Alibaba Group, also confirmed the news and said that CNZZ is committed to serving the small- and medium-sized Internet enterprises, which fits Alibaba's business scope. But Tao did not disclose the financial details about the acquisition.

Alibaba started its industry chain layout by mergers and acquisitions a few years ago. In 2008, it acquired the forum program provider PHPWind; and in September 2009, it acquired the infrastructure service provider HiChina for CNY540 million.

Public files from the official website of CNZZ show that it is an Internet technology service company invested in by IDG and it focuses on providing third-party statistics and related analysis to various websites. Meanwhile, CNZZ is engaged in Internet statistics monitoring, technical research on statistics analysis, and product development and application. The company claims to currently have 1.81 million registered users and 3.06 million statistics sites. About 1.6 million websites use the services of CNZZ every day.