new member here .... just been looking through this forum and was after the top SE's in ireland .... couldnt see any info .... anyone able to point me in the right direction?
Take a look though these threads which might be of use.
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
A few active Irish directory sites exist. However all these Irish sites combined would not equal the traffic that Google gets. Google also supplies results feeds to two of the main Irish ISPs (Eircom and Esat/IOL) though the traffic from Eircom is by far the more significant. Many of the Irish "search engines" tend to have limited operational lifetimes due to having no clear acquisition plan for new websites other than user submissions (not the most efficient way) and no clear business plan. Indeed it would be safe to say that many of the Irish directories are operated as sidelines rather than as real standalone businesses.
Regards...jmcc
[1] Both are .com but only WhoisIreland is .ie
what is confusing me however is i've recently seen a top 17 (dated may 2004) list of the most popular websites in Ireland (lists all sites not just s/e's) and it states Yahoo! as the most popular, and google is nowhere to be seen.
ive also looked at keywords on google.ie and on their adwords programs it states that i would recieve 1.1 clicks per day (this was with a €20 max bid!) - what is strange is the keyword i entered is pretty "popular". so to be honest this is confusing the hell outta me.
should i take the google adwords estimated clicks & the recent report ive seen which had yahoo! as the leading site in ireland with a pince of salt?
what is confusing me however is i've recently seen a top 17 (dated may 2004) list of the most popular websites in Ireland (lists all sites not just s/e's) and it states Yahoo! as the most popular, and google is nowhere to be seen.It is probably one of those dubious Neilsen lists where they monitor a number of household computers and see what sites they use most. The methodology for this is rubbish and the sample size is probably not representative of the market. In reality, people navigate by search engines once they go outside thier small (local) number of frequently used websites. This would indicate that Google, MSN and Yahoo would be up at the the top. The e-mail from Yahoo/Hotmail (MSN) would probably account for the high showing of these sites.
The main Irish sites are probably the news sites, The Irish Times Ireland portal, the RTE News site and the jobs sites, followed closely by the property rental portal sites. The community websites would probably be up there as well though these impressions would be from a repeating audience (as would the news portal audiences) rather than "drive-by users".
The big problem with some of these "lists of top sites" is that they are not based on reliable data or proper webserver logs. Search engine spiders, scrapers etc will be included as if they were real users.
Regards...jmcc
Thanks very much for the info, much appreciated.
