amazonaws.com
amazonaws.com is the domain family behind Amazon Web Services. When a page loads an image out of a storage bucket, calls an API gateway, or talks to a server sitting behind an AWS load balancer, the request goes to a hostname under amazonaws.com, which is why it shows up in network logs on sites that have no visible connection to Amazon. It is a hosting address rather than a product, so this index attaches no vendor or category to it. It was detected on 189 of the 5,294 sites measured, 3.6 percent, and ranks 22nd of the 88 companies here by reach.
The pages behind it are not light
The median site where amazonaws.com appeared contacted 13 separate companies and made 57 third-party requests, with 3 of those companies classified as trackers. That places this set 23rd of 88 on companies, 23rd of 88 on requests and 32nd of 88 on trackers. Hosting is supposed to be invisible plumbing, and in one narrow sense it is: a request to a storage bucket tells you nothing about what the bucket holds. But the sites that reach for it sit well above the middle of this index in how much else they are pulling in at the same time.
Contact starts late and keeps going
Median first contact on these sites was 811 milliseconds, the 18th-highest of the 88 companies, so outside activity on an amazonaws.com site typically begins later than on most sets measured here. The earliest recorded across the 189 was 85 milliseconds. 175 of them, 92.6 percent, had contact before the banner window closed, with a median of 8 companies in before it did. The figure that sets this set apart is what comes afterwards: at the median, 3 further companies are contacted once the window has closed. On at least half of these pages, third-party work is still being started after the point at which a visitor could have answered.
Google on four sites in five
152 of the 189 sites, 80.4 percent, also carried Google. Behind that: jsDelivr on 39, 20.6 percent; Amazon CloudFront on 31, 16.4; LinkedIn on 30, 15.9; Meta Pixel on 28, 14.8; Cloudflare on 25, 13.2; then OneTrust, Amazon Ads, Criteo and adnxs.com on 20 each, 10.6. It is a deliberately unfocused profile: a package CDN, a professional-network pixel, a consent vendor and an ad exchange all sitting in the same narrow band. That is what a general commercial web presence looks like, rather than a publisher, a shop or a newsroom, each of which would show one of those categories running far ahead of the others.
Just over half carry a banner
98 of the 189 sites showed a recognisable consent tool. The IAB TCF signal was seen on 49, OneTrust on 29, Osano on 9, Cookiebot on 5, Usercentrics on 3 and CookieYes on 2, counted as sightings rather than shares, since a single site may carry more than one layer. The split between a publisher-oriented framework signal and enterprise vendors mirrors the co-presence list: this is not one industry using one stack, it is a hosting domain that turns up underneath several.
From a single company to seventeen
amazontrust.com and arcgis.com each registered a single company; amazon.in and fda.gov registered 5. In the middle sit eventbrite.com and noaa.gov at 8, britannica.com at 9, cursor.sh at 11 with all 11 inside the window, and optimizely.com at 6. At the top wsj.com registered 16 with 15 inside, and soundcloud.com 15 with 11, starting earliest of these examples at 228 milliseconds. The outlier is washington.edu: 17 companies, none of them inside the window, and first contact at 5,547 milliseconds, a page that waited more than five seconds before touching anything outside itself.
| Site | Companies | Before consent | First contact |
|---|---|---|---|
| soundcloud.com | 15 | 11 | 228 ms |
| wsj.com | 16 | 15 | 382 ms |
| amazontrust.com | 1 | 1 | 868 ms |
| eventbrite.com | 8 | 6 | 411 ms |
| noaa.gov | 8 | 4 | 1341 ms |
| britannica.com | 9 | 9 | 747 ms |
| optimizely.com | 6 | 5 | 963 ms |
| amazon.in | 5 | 5 | 190 ms |
| cursor.sh | 11 | 11 | 834 ms |
| fda.gov | 5 | 4 | 516 ms |
| washington.edu | 17 | 0 | 5547 ms |
| arcgis.com | 1 | 1 | 1515 ms |
| Tool | Sites |
|---|---|
| IAB TCF consent tool | 49 |
| OneTrust | 29 |
| Osano | 9 |
| Cookiebot | 5 |
| Usercentrics | 3 |
| CookieYes | 2 |
The six most common are listed. The remaining 1 of 98 sites with a banner carry something outside that six. One tool is recorded per site, so these counts never overlap.
Seen on the same pages
Companies most often contacted by the same sites. Co-presence only — the crawl records what arrived, not who called whom.
- GoogleTogether on 152 of these sites
- jsDelivrTogether on 39 of these sites
- Amazon CloudFrontTogether on 31 of these sites
- LinkedInTogether on 30 of these sites
- Meta PixelTogether on 28 of these sites
- CloudflareTogether on 25 of these sites
- OneTrustTogether on 20 of these sites
- Amazon AdsTogether on 20 of these sites
Questions
Does amazonaws.com in a request log mean the site is tracking me?
On its own, no. The domain identifies where a resource is hosted, not what the resource does: a product photograph, a font file, a login API and an analytics endpoint can all sit under it. This index counts it as third-party contact and does not place it in the tracking classification.
Why does it appear on so many different kinds of site?
Because it is infrastructure. The 189 sites span a news organisation, a government weather service, a university, a mapping platform and a developer tool, and the only thing they demonstrably share is that some part of the page is served from Amazon's cloud.
What does a median of 3 companies after the window mean?
It is the median count of companies first contacted after the consent window had closed, taken across the 189 sites. Half of them added 3 or more at that stage. It is measured directly rather than derived by subtracting one median from another, which would not give the same answer.
How does this relate to Amazon's advertising services?
They are counted separately in this index. Amazon Ads was present on 20 of these 189 sites and Amazon CloudFront on 31, so a page can be reached by more than one Amazon-operated destination and each is recorded under its own name.