Making Sense of Online Rankings

For sake of transparency, let me say that I have not found one easy way to make sense of site rankings, especially since blogs came on the scene. When TV correspondent Greg Dobbs and I founded BoomerCafé in the summer of 1999, about all we had was whether the site showed up eventually on Google and then, how it stacked up against similar sites. We got lucky because BoomerCafé not only showed up but was listed ahead of AARP’s attempt to reach baby boomers online.

Back then, many Web developers thought that “hits” would determine a site’s popularity. Hits count the number of requests sent for a file on a server. But, hits are misleading, and here’s why – if one Web page contains five photos, one request for that page is seen as six hits.

What we have today are several valuable resources for determining popularity of a site or blog. When these resources are evaluated together, the results are quite useful:

• Alexa.com – If there is one single and generally accepted method for determining rankings of both blogs and Web sites, it is Alexa.com, which is owned by Amazon.com.  While some people are quick to point out its flaws, I personally like Alexa.com because it provides a quick snapshot of how a site is doing to attract audience in the whole online universe.  With tens of millions of sites and blogs online, If your blog or site is in the top 100,000 at Alexa.com, you have reason to celebrate.  On the other hand, if it is ranked above 2,000,000, you might have reason to be concerned.
• Technorati.  This free service provides a ranking just for blogs.  While not as easy to use as Alexa.com, Technorati has become the standard for determining how a blog ranks in the enormous blogosphere.  If you have a blog, it is important to register it with Technorati so the service can track traffic.
• Google Analytics.  I find that Google Analytics is an outstanding free service for daily tracking of site traffic and trends.  You will need a Google account and carefully follow the instructions for embedding special Google Analytics code into your blog.  Once it is set up, it works great.  Yet, while Google Analytics tracks your blog, there is no comparison with other sites.