Archive for: alexa

Monitoring your Search Engines Positions

kpmrs-logoIf you are a geek blogger like me, you would know that the having a good ranking within the most important search engines it is a big deal if you are trying to promote your blog. KPMRS (Keyword Position Monitoring Report Service) can help you with that by monitoring constantly the page rank you have with Google, Yahoo and Bing.

How to use it is very simple, you don’t even have to be registered to receive any result, you can query and get some instant results about your site and a special keyword. The free registration can also give you: Email Alerts (when position changes or when a competitor has passed you); weekly reports; and monitor for Google’s Page Rank and Alexa.

Here’s a query about my blog with a keyword that I know I have a good ranking about it:

kpmrs-search

It is pretty cool to have these results and see the differences between the search engines; and of course will be very helpful to you if you are setting up your business to evaluate the status of popularity.

Dataopedia: Look At Your Sites Key Metrics In One Place

Not too long ago the guys over at Killerstartups launched a new service called Dataopedia. Dataopedia is a basic solution that allows users to type in any url and find quickly key metrics from various sources.

Metrics that are measured include Google PR, Alexa Numbers, Compete and Quantcast analysis, Social media breakdowns, Twitter news, Technorati links, Friendfeed and url registration information. Currently, Dataopedia pulls in all this information from various partners including Crunchbase, Compete, Digg, Getsatisfaction and more.

There’s also something interesting buried at the bottom of the site profiles: an ability to comment on the site using Disqus. While that’s not likely to have the reach of a Google Search Wiki, it provides yet another way to gather details about the site and its reputation.

Dataopedia does a great job of pulling all the key quantitative and qualitative site measures required in todays world of web 2.0. There is still a lot of improvements that can be made with the user interface, but over it is probably already leading in this specific market, even thought market is very small.

dataopedia-crenk

Bittorrent Sites Still On The Rise, But Will The Internet Ever Get Control Back?

As we all know Bittorrent sites are on the rise and continue to grow. That being said I thought I would just write a short but sweet article about this growth and try to work out if the internet and piracy is ever going to get control of these sites. Every month it seems as though there is a new bittorrent site on the net, but at the same time we keep hearing about torrent sites being taken down and people getting sued for piracy. That all being said is anyone going to take control of these types of sites on the internet and either change the world piracy laws or simply just allow them to exist and work out was to monetize their content for the content providers.

Currently, in Alexa there are 3 bittorrent sites in the top 120 worldwide, these sites are ThePirateBay.org, Mininova.org and isohunt.com. These sites are all run on the same basic premise, whatever you want is available for FREE. Below I have published the Compete graph which shows the basic traffic trends of all these sites, obviously rising at a steady pace. That being said Compete still has no grip at all on the traffic numbers for these sites, because they are probably about 100 times more than what they are on Compete.

bittorrent sites

Since these sites are so on the rise, how come they arent getting more widely accepted? Organisation like the IFPI and MPAA think that heavy handed tactics can get these sites shutdown and offline, but we all know deep down that is never going to happen. Now that is mainly never going to happen because of the piracy laws. Currently, the piracy laws are different in nearly every country in the world and these organisations and governments still havent realised that the Internet (in law terms) shouldnt be thought of differently in each country, but should really be through of as its own country. The internet should have its own universal laws that control the entire system, because otherwise the same cycle is going to happen for a long time to come.

Im not really anti bittorrent sites and im not totally the other way either. I just think the governments need to get their act together and start thinking of the internet as its own specific territory, and then these bittorrent sites would have to stick to these laws. Until that time bittorrents arent illegal and they are totally here to stay!

Feed Compare: Compare Subscriber Numbers From Any Feedburner Account

I was reading about an interesting product over at Webappers today, Feed Compare. Feed Compare is a free web application that can be used to compared feedburner feed counts from any website that has enable their feed counter. This tool is great, simple and easy to use. Users just have to find out the feedburner address of the feeds they want to compare and then insert them into this compete looking tool.

Compare FeedBurner Subscriber Numbers

Features for this tool include: viewing up to 24 months worth of data (other options are: 12 months, 6 months, 3 months and one month). Zoom in on particular timeframes using click and drag. Users can link directly to the feed comparisons chart much like Alexa ‘permalink’ style. And it allows users compare up to 4 feeds at a time.

Alexa Ratings Algorithm Changed

It has been reported by the guys over at Techcrunch that Alexa has changed the algorithm for their ratings. Alexa announced that they are pulling in more sources than just the Alexa toolbar and that they have also improved their methodology.

This has all come as a pleasant change. For a long time Alexa has been criticized because of their ratings and the fact that they are just completely made up and not really relevant. There has been a lot of sites that have take a huge hit, main example is DailyBlogTips.

In the race for providing the most accurate stats of websites for free, I still think Compete and Quantcast are a long way ahead of Alexa, but these changes might make a huge change in how relevant the popularity numbers actually are.