Dear Alexa Web Search Developers,

Effective today, June 6, 2007, we have released a new API and corresponding pricing plan for the Alexa Web Search web service. The new API adds the capability to receive up to 1,000,000 search results in a single query, along with a number of other enhancements, which are detailed in the Release Notes. Releasing a new version of the API (vs. building on the existing one) enabled us to offer this new functionality.

EXISTING ALEXA WEB SEARCH APPLICATIONS
The previous API will continue to be available for 15 months until September 1, 2008, though future improvements will focus on the new version of the API. This change does NOT affect your calls to the previous API, either from a billing or a functionality standpoint.

PRICING CHANGES

Applications that consume the previous API will continue to be billed under the old pricing plan, at $0.30 per 1,000 requests. The vast majority of existing applications running against the new API will continue to be billed at this same rate; if you are running very complex queries that contain the equivalent of more than 20 simple queries, these queries will be billed differently under the new pricing plan, as described under “Pricing” on the Alexa Web Search detail page. You have been automatically subscribed to this new pricing plan, which adds charges for functionality in the new API.

Please take a look at the following migration resources to help you take advantage of the new functionality:

Release notes:
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=791

New pricing plan:
http://aws.amazon.com/alexawebsearch

Technical Documentation:
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AlexaWebSearch/2007-03-15/

Updated Code Samples:
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=97

Manage your Alexa Web Search subscription (under "Alexa Web Search Service"):
https://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/developer/account/index.html

Sincerely,
The Alexa Team