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No Big Surprises In The Alexa Traffic
Rankings Of The Snowsports Web Sites
4/19/07--
Alexa, the Amazon.com owned database
of Web site statistics, most well known for its traffic rankings,
has some interesting numbers pertaining to snowsport media Web
sites. Although there are a few facts of note. there are no big
suprises. As one would expect, the Web sites with busy forums
and large, active communities, lead the list of ski and snowboard
sites with the most traffic, and by a wide margin. First, a little
background on Alexa and its traffic data collection methodology.
In the simplest of terms, Alexa
has established a ranking system for Web sites worldwide, based
upon the level of traffic each site receives from the number
of people who visit with the Alexa toolbar installed on their
computer. The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated
historical traffic data, from what Alexa says are millions of
users of its toolbar. The Alexa toolbar has features useful to
tech and webmaster- types, so Alexa's results tend to be biased
in favor of sites with content relevant to those folks. For purposes
of comparison within a specific category, such as snowsports
media Web sites, Alexa's traffic rankings are worthy of note
for those with an interest in the subject.
Finally, here is a little perspective
on the actual numbers from Aaron Wall, author of the search engine
bible The SEO Book: "A lower Alexa number means a
greater level of traffic, and the traffic drops off logarithmically
as the ranking number increases." Wall adds that there are
techniques webmasters can use to raise their Web site traffic
ranking on Alexa, "but if it shows your rankings in the
millions, then your site likely has next to no traffic."
Here are the April 19th Alexa Traffic
Rankings of all of the ski and snowboard media sites we could
think of:
Site ...............Rank
Tetongravity.com 34,013
TelemarkTalk.com 58,760
Skipressworld.com 155,333
Epicski.com 177,898
Telemarktips.com 190,910
Wildsnow.com 267,924
Powdermag.com 375,101
Biglines.com 440,111
Splitboard.com 520,483
Thepiton.com 670,238
Couloirmag.com 1,145,059
TetonAT.com* 1,542,992
Earnyourturns.com** 2,561,731
Freeheellife.com 3,366,898
Backcountrymag.com 3,842,217
Descender.com*** 6,913,358
*new this season **a backdoor
to the Couloir site .***defunct, no new updates since 2003
Of note is the relatively strong
showing of Lou Dawson's Alpine Touring oriented blog, Wildsnow.com.
AT still represents a tiny (but growing) portion of the overall
ski industry, with equipment sales of around one third that of
tele, which is itself a very small niche, with gear sales less
than 2% that of alpine skiing (according to the latest SIA specialty
store sales data). For a blog site without a true community type
forum, Lou would appear to have done very well in building an
audience. Credit Dawson's dedication and work ethic in producing
near daily fresh content, as well as his passion and authoritative
knowledge, which come through loud in clear in everything he
writes.
Outdoor industry insider blog "The
Piton" also caught our attention us. Although not all that
high on the list, The Piton's content is narrowly directed to
a very limited potential market. But what The Piton lacks in
visitors it more than makes up for in attitude... it's an entertaining
blog that has gained an audience within the industry by actually
having something to say and to to stand for... the pseudo anonymity
can be tiresome, but with blog
entries like this one, it's understandable, especially if
you know some of the players and how incestuous the outdoor industry
can be. Tomorrow, anyone of these guys and gals could be working
for today's object of scorn. Still, The Piton is great fun, and
it's cool to see that it's being read. |