Comments on: Review of travel blog ranking sites

By: Natalie - Turkish Travel Blog

Natalie - Turkish Travel Blog — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 10:12:43 +0000

I am obessed with my blog stats. If one month shows lower than the rest then I start to freak. Problem is however there will come a day when my stats drop. AGH!!

By: The Blogpacker Review | The Working Traveller

The Blogpacker Review | The Working Traveller — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 00:07:42 +0000

[...] Gary touches on a number of other subjects but fails to address how big a narcissistic bunch of nerds we all are. Recognising this, Andy Jarosz provides a review of travel blog ranking sites. [...]

By: Mikeachim

Mikeachim — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 22:38:12 +0000

Yep. Alexa is fickle. It has moods. Not quite as bad as Technorati when it went through its great seismic hissy-fit a few years back, but it’s still emotionally dangerous to put too much faith in Alexa…

(And let’s not be squeamish about using terms like “emotionally”. These are our babies, after all).

Having weaned myself off Alexa Sparky by shifting away from Firefox to Opera, I’m getting accustomed to a world without shouting “why have I just dropped / jumped ten thousand places for no apparent reason, you ludicrous piece of £&^$?” which, I feel, wasn’t healthy behaviour in the long run.

Of course now, thanks to this post and your kind efforts in putting it together, I’ve got 8 other sites to obsess over. *head in hands*

By: Caz Makepeace

Caz Makepeace — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 01:41:48 +0000

btw forgot to add. I love Brendan’s new ranking system, because it is based in part to human evaluation. There is more to a site than traffic numbers, which we’ve just discovered can be unreliable. It’s great that Brendan is discovering those sites that have good content and design but have not yet got the “rankings.” I’m discovering a lot of great websites and some of my favorites are appearing on this list who have really inspiring content. It would take him a lot of time to evaluate all those sites.

By: Caz Makepeace

Caz Makepeace — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 01:37:54 +0000

Great post Andy
Very helpful! I’ll also note that compete only tracks US traffic which for me does not make it a reliable tool. There are 194 other countries that could be visiting your blog and Compete won’t even register them. Too bad if you’re a really popular blog outside of the US, you get shunned.

By: Travel Blogs: Best of the Week (June 27-July 3, 2010) | Adventurous Kate

Travel Blogs: Best of the Week (June 27-July 3, 2010) | Adventurous Kate — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:05:46 +0000

[...] Review of Travel Blog Ranking Sites: “Website stats – an addictive pastime?” Andy from 501 Places asks. Um, YES. I’m obsessed. He lays out several of the top ranking tools and explains why they’re useful. GREAT post! (I just wish that Travel Blog Sites was accepting new bloggers, because mine would be up there for sure.) [...]

By: Trans-Americas Journey

Trans-Americas Journey — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 06:30:23 +0000

The problem with Alexa is it too can be WAAAAAY off. For several months I was languishing w/ a ranking around 1,500,000. This made absolutely no sense as I had more traffic and appreciably higher rankings on Compete than others that rankings lower than 300,000. After doing a bit of research I found that there are many others who also had sites that just didn’t show up on Alexa’s radar for whatever reason. About 7 weeks ago I took some steps that were recommended on some sites, steps which Alexa claims on their blog will not have any effect on rankings. Clearly they are just trying to protect their reputation as it certainly did have an effect…you be the judge.
(Taken from my current alexa stats http://www.trans-americas.com)
8 weeks ago I had a ranking of over 1,500,000
About 7 weeks ago installed code so that Alexa whould properly rank me.
My current rank (3 month average) 492,336 an increase of 1,022,628.
My 1 month rank 336,531 an increase of 317,982.
Within days of initiating these steps my ranking dropped from 1.5 million, to 1.2 million, then under 1 million in just over 1 week and has steadily dropped since then.
Clearly Alexa has some major flaws. Mine is not a new site or domain so I should have been properly ranking, but I wasn’t. This was something I should have done 2 years ago, but wasn’t aware of the problem until a few months ago. Sadly, imperfect Alexa IS that important so it is important to make sure your site is ranking properly.

By: Cam

Cam — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:14:59 +0000

Thanks! Some new ones to check out.

By: Andy Jarosz

Andy Jarosz — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:01:51 +0000

Thanks Kate for such a thorough response. As you say, each of these needs to be taken in context, and usually with a healthy dose of scepticism. That said, they do provide a barometer of sorts for how a site is doing. Good for self-monitoring, but as you rightly point out, maybe not with the credibility required to influence an advertising quote.

By: Kate

Kate — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:25:48 +0000

After four years of experience of selling/managing ads for a prominent travel website, I believe that Alexa is way overhyped. Not a single advertiser has ever asked us about our Alexa ranking, and several SEO experts have told us that it is an open secret that Alexa is a joke. Its algorithm relies heavily on the toolbar (which we know our core audience would be highly unlikely to download) directories like DMOZ, which have serious flaws in how they are updated. [For example, my employer's site is not in DMOZ because there has been no editor of the category for over four YEARS.] Bloggers seem to care about Alexa, but advertisers do not because they know it’s bogus — real people (outside the techie sphere) will not download the toolbar, so the base audience is very skewed. That’s why you see so many tech sites ranking so highly.

We’ve had very fishy experiences with Compete.com that have shown the data to be unreliable. We’ve had spikes in traffic that were not reflected on Compete.com, and also the reverse — dips in traffic where Compete.com said our traffic grew. Quantcast.com is much more accurate because it’s tracked directly on your site.

Once your site reaches a threshold of traffic, most advertisers will pay a CPM and use a tracking pixel to count impressions/PVs. It pays to be honest about your traffic numbers. We use Google Analytics and one other tracking tool.