Bestoftheweb

[rcjordan]

I was emailed and asked to submit one of my sites. Besides the spam-like request, there are other items on site that give me reason to pause. One the other hand, there's the following:

One of the top 350 "Most Trafficked Sites", according to Media Metrix (source: Media Metrix, August 2000).

BestoftheWeb is also the #31 "fastest growing" site on the Web (source: PC Data, September 16, 2000).

Comments, anyone?

[bestoftheweb.com]

[Mike_Mackin]

"Add a URL below and the site will be scheduled for review by our editorial staff. Don't forget, sites that link to BestoftheWeb are given priority status for review."

Should we creat a BestoftheWeb doorway?

[Hope]

The last company I worked for has had their site listed for over a year. They get about 40 hits a week. This is a site that only has about 1000 users a week. Not a very good percentage, but nothing to sneeze at either. The do drive some traffic.

[chiyo]

My first experience with Best of the Web is when it started popping up when people git a 404 on our sites. Turns out our ISP had made a 404 redirect to best of the Web, so they must have a good affiliate program!

Funny reason the ISP gave. "...404's are like garbage.. we are just trying to make a little revenue by recycling it..." When we pointed out nicely that visitors may not like this intrustion and that the dfeault 404 screen actually helps people lcoate a page they "just" missed.. he didnt seem to understand.

So they became the world's largest search engine by imposing themselves on people who didnt ask. IId give them a wide berth.

[johnH2376]

I have had my site listed in BestoftheWeb for about 9 months and have been surprised by the volume of visitors it has generated. I now get more from them than any other engine except Yahoo.

I noticed a huge spike in traffic about a month ago which coincided with their site redesign. Their last site looked like a third grader did the HTML, but their new look is pretty sharp.

I bet they just got some VC funding.

[rcjordan]

Hi John, welcome to WmW. Yes, I've seen it mentioned that their site had a makeover. And, on the day after I opened this thread, I actually did have a single referral in the logs (I haven't submitted to them, btw ??).

Out of curiousity, what general topic category would your site be classified under? Nothing specific, I'm just interested in generic demographics of sites like BOTW.

[rencke]

>>Turns out our ISP had made a 404 redirect to best of the Web

That is simply outrageous! :o I have a site with 1000+ outgoing links and have to rely on an automatic tool to find out if they are broken or not. If bestoftheweb starts doing this kind of deal on a large scale, webmasters will end up spending all their time handclicking each of their links, simply because their tools can no longer be relied upon.

johnH2376: How many 404:s does your site generate? Maybe that's why you're getting referrals from bestoftheweb? Time for a tune up?

Interesting thought: Is your site in good shape? Here's the easy way to find out: Submit it to bestoftheweb and check your log. The more referrals you get, the deeper you are in ****.

[rcjordan]

A little less than a year ago, I rec'd a slick promo package snail-mailed to my web company. This company (BOTW, perhaps?? I cannot recall.) wanted to acquire ad space on my 404's. This seems like bottom-fishing to me.

[Brett_Tabke]

Since everyone I know has receive their spam e, I think it is safe to write off bestof the web as file 13.