Web-traffic analysis site Compete has come out with a ranking of the top 50 sites for September that gives a quick look at the ever-changing online landscape.
While there may be arguments about the accuracy of any given traffic analysis, if the bias is retained across the board, then we can look at the change, which is where the real interesting numbers come out.
The list ranks sites by unique visitors and, according to Compete, the top dog on the totem pole is still Google, followed by Yahoo and Facebook. No big surprises here. Bing, the Microsoft entry into the search engine market, cracked the top 10 this month with an 11% increase over the last month and a 108% increase over the last year. Bing actually saw the largest growth of any site on the list over the past year, with Ask.com following with a 75% growth over last year. Google and Yahoo, in comparison, stayed relatively even, with 1% and 0.5% losses respectively.
Unsurprisingly, Myspace saw a 19% loss over the year, while Mapquest lost 22% and Flickr lost nearly 17%. (Perhaps today’s Myspace redesign could help stop the bleeding?) Flickr saw the largest monthly drop, with a 14% drop in September, that could potentially be explained by Facebook’s bigger, crispier photos. In the media, CNN and The New York Times had a rough go, dropping by 17%, while CNET jumped by nearly 15%.
Do you see anything in Compete’s list that just doesn’t add up or surprises you entirely?
