Forum Moderators: phranque
I recently got an unsolicited e-mail from a company claiming that a site that I'm responsible for is ranked xx,xxx among the xxx,xxx most visited sites on the net. I'm reading their entire site for info and am currently trying to get the full story of this ranking, whether I should really put much confidence in it.
The e-mail had a hyperlink that would take you to your site in the list. Instead of following their pre-made link (which was bugged w/ some code) I opened a browser and manually typed in their home page url and followed to the rankings and sure enough the site is listed where they indicated. It just really surprises me because after checking a few similar sites like ours, that I know get more traffic overall, and they are listed farther down in the rankings.
So, my question is: does anyone have any experience or more info on this ranking system? I noticed that they write that they have tracked over 25,000 Internet surfers for over two years and this gives them their rankings. That leads me to believe that it is somewhat like the Neilson ratings thingy.
Thanks for any replies.
ps: I wasn't sure about being allowed to post the url to their rankings so I didn't.
[edit] Their rankings list Rank, Unique Visitors/month, Page Views, and Links = Pretty interesting.
I've found out that this ranking is generated by web-surfers using a particular "web enhancer" program which comes loaded with the necessary spyware to track their browseing.
So with this ranking system the way to improve your ranking is to 1) Promote the use of their "web enhancer" gimick on your site and provide a download so more people already coming to your site start using it or 2) Have those sites linking to your site do the same.
With these rankings being based simply on the habits of the small sample group that they enticed to install their "web enhancer" software I've formed my own opinion on the usefullness of our ranking.
Thank you.
