Wikipedia as a top website, the new kid in town Options

[thekohser]

I have posted a spreadsheet that reviews the comScore press releases throughout the years, ranking web "families" of sites by traffic counts. I simply took the Top 25 sites from each year and posted their ranks.

There's a glaring gap in that comScore didn't issue any press releases in 2005 related to their overall ranking index.

I will probably try to add to this analysis with information from Alexa, although that site measures only specific domains, not corporate agglomerations of sites.

A few things are still clear, though:

1. Wikipedia is a real newcomer to the list of Top 25 sites, much like the Fox/MySpace phenomenon, and to some extent similar to Apple/ITunes, NY Times, and Adobe.

2. Companies that were once in the Big Time don't always stay there. Remember Altavista? They were in the Top 15 for three years running (two of those years in the Top 10). It's no longer even in the Top 200 (according to Alexa). And Excite.com? Seems to have just nosedived out of the Alexa Top 1000, despite being the #9 site just four years ago.

At this time, I would welcome any commentary from the WR, especially in two areas:

A. Did I mess up anything in the spreadsheet, especially vis-a-vis not spotting a merger that should be combined? (I know that I deliberately kept AOL and Time-Warner separate.)

B. Does this give us any guidance or insight into the characteristics of domains that succeed in remaining popular for years and years, versus those that inevitably flame out? What lessons might Wikipedia learn, if it wished to remain in the Top 10 for as long as possible?

Greg

This post has been edited by thekohser: Tue 3rd April 2007, 4:11pm

[Jonny Cache]

Just a reminiscence. I can still remember a time when AltaVista was the leading search engine among academics and Google was just a baby, mostly being used by online shoppers. And then AltaVista added ads, and it immediately tanked for research purposes.

Jonny