September 12, 2007
Free Tools Help Measure Web Site Popularity
How do you know if your company’s Web site is competitive? Many firms announce rankings periodically, and the Mutual Fund Education Alliance bestows a few awards every year. While those assessments are qualitative, a few free Web tools make it possible to measure a site’s relative standing.
We’ve modeled the following table on the approach used by eBizMBA (see 25 Most Popular Business Sites as an example). And, we used the top mutual fund Web sites as identified by Alexa.com excluding the Singapore-based Fundsupermart.com and UK-based TrustNet Limited.
eBizMBA’s model considers three sources in measuring “top sites:”
- Inbound links, which are key to search engines discovering a site. Links from other Web sites serve to validate the expertness of a Web site. The source used in the table is Yahoo’s Site Explorer (Yahoo login required).
- Monthly visitors as counted by Compete.com. Compete “triangulates” multiple data sources, including ISP, Panel & Toolbar to estimate U.S. traffic.
- Monthly visitors as counted by Quantcast.com. Quantcast says it observes “anonymous records of visits to internet destinations. For a portion of the observations, they have certain information, such as the age, gender or income level of the Internet visitor and/or their household. This group is called a panel and forms one aspect of our analysis and reporting methodology.” Internet log records are also analyzed.
- Alexa rank, which is a blend based on a combined measure of page views and users (reach).
Proceed with caution, as the data from all three sources are estimates. But, if you’ll forgive the oxymoron, the discrepancies are consistent. (And for more information about all competitive intelligence tools, listen to Stone Temple Consulting’s excellent podcast interview with Web analytics authority Avinash Kaushik in February 2007.)
- Top 10 Mutual Fund Web Sites
- Vanguard
23,773 - Inbound Links | 1,917,486 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 1,700,000 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 13,522 Alexa Ranking - Charles Schwab
36,174 - Inbound Links | 1,202,891- Compete Monthly Visitors | 952,665- Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 16,922 Alexa Ranking - T. Rowe Price
6,134 - Inbound Links | 668,254- Compete Monthly Visitors | 527,724- Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 32,473 Alexa Ranking - American Funds
4,895 - Inbound Links | 488,733- Compete Monthly Visitors | 358,112- Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 50,300 Alexa Ranking - Ameriprise Financial
32,965 - Inbound Links | 524,493- Compete Monthly Visitors | 266,500 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 56,283 Alexa Ranking - Fidelity Mutual Funds
214 - Inbound Links | 4,224,986 (all of Fidelity.com)- Compete Monthly Visitors | 1,100,000 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | N/A for this site alone, 7,233 for Fidelity.com Alexa Ranking - Prudent Bear Funds
23,579 - Inbound Links | 24,377- Compete Monthly Visitors | 20,030 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 116,302 Alexa Ranking - ETF Connect
14,316 - Inbound Links | 46,032- Compete Monthly Visitors | 42,142 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 119,005 Alexa Ranking - iShares
6,824 - Inbound Links | 85,183- Compete Monthly Visitors | 65,690 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 122,243 Alexa Ranking - American Century
3,824 - Inbound Links | 170,813- Compete Monthly Visitors | 138,735 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 136,819 Alexa Ranking
as of September 6, 2007
How does the reported data sync with what you know about the traffic and usage of your site? If you find them generally reliable, how can you and your staff use these competitive insights to benchmark your company’s effectiveness on the Web? We encourage you to comment, and we’ll have additional thoughts in a subsequent post.
