Top 5 sites by RSS FeedBurner count: their Google PageRank and Alexa rank analyzed
Let’s admit it. We’re all killing ourselves in a cyberwar for a better PageRank and Alexa Traffic Rank. However, there’s one important measurement that has been left in obscurity for a while: FeedBurner Rank (no, it doesn’t exist).
My mission today was to find out what the top 5 sites by RSS FeedBurner count are. FeedBurner provides a small chiclet telling us how many users are subscribed to a particular blog/website. Since all the Top 5 websites have more than 100K subscribers (based on daily traffic), I don’t think it’s an insignificant datum.
However, more important, I would like to compare their FeedBurner subscriber count vs. Alexa and PageRank. I promise you’ll find interesting results…
Edit: I just found out that the Official Google Blog has 617K readers, but since they are responsible for both PageRank and FeedBurner, I’m not going to take them into account.
Note: Special thanks to FranticIndustries.com, this is where I got the top 5 websites. Though I did take advantage of part of his investigation, his post is a tad old (March 2007), and besides I’m adding an interesting part from my side too.
So, let’s start off with #1:
#1: Simply Recipes: 613K | Alexa: #21′167 | PageRank: 6
Simply Recipes is a cooking-related blog updated daily with a whopping ~613′000 daily RSS readers. However, its Alexa rank is good but modest (remember, the higher the Alexa rank, the better), with a regular PR 6. Let’s take a look at #2 and we’ll find some interesting results:
#2: TechCrunch: 576K readers | Alexa: #803 | PageRank: 7
TechCrunch, also a blog, is just 7% behind in RSS readers —however, its Alexa rank is far superior compared to Simply Recipes. Its PageRank is also better than Simply Recipes. What could be happening here? Let’s draw conclusions later. On to #3:
#3: Boing boing: 398K readers | Alexa: #3457 | PageRank: 7
With approx. 180′000 or 30% less subscribers than TechCrunch is Boing Boing. So, what’s Boing Boing? It’s a Directory of Wonderful Things (yep, I’m totally clueless too). Anyway, its Alexa rank is also four times below TechCrunch’s, but their PageRank is the same. Hmm…
#4: 43 Folders: 125K readers | Alexa: #25′982 | PageRank: 5
To tell the truth, I’m a little surprised that 43 Folders has that many readers. Its Alexa rank is decent but not great (a little below Simple Recipes), and it has a rather modest PageRank 5. Now let’s check our last website…
#5: Interesting Thing of the Day: 115K readers | Alexa: #234′632 (!) | PageRank: 5
Whoa, what was that? 115′000 readers is definitely good. Real good. While ITOTD’s number of readers is 3 times less than Boing boing’s, but really near 43 Folders, with a rather good PageRank, its Alexa rank is really way below what I would have thought. In fact, Alexa doesn’t even provide detailed statistics for websites ranked below 100′000. I mean, I know websites from a small niche that are ranked way better.
It’s time to analyze
We all know that each ranking method has its flaws. Let’s start with Google’s PageRank: Google counts the number of links pointing to a website. Though all the 5 PageRanks are rather similar (ranging from 5 to 7), I definitely think that SimplyRecipes has lots of traffic from those who are hunting new recipes (duh), however, it’s probably more common to find tech-related inbound links to TechCrunch from other websites, rather than websites linking to a new recipe. Just think of an example and you’ll agree with me: “Latest Sony VAIO review” vs. “New sushi developed by the Japanese”. I don’t see much of the latter one.
What about the Alexa rank? This is the most controversial one, and will always be. Its traffic rank is based on visits from users who have the Alexa toolbar installed. Alexa rank may be seriously biased, since users who install the toolbar probably know a little about computers. If you think about it this way, what would be more common, a TechCrunch surfer with an Alexa toolbar installed or my mom looking for a recipe on her MacBook? (Sorry mom, I love you!) However, it’s also true that techies are more bound to subscribe to RSS feeds than normal internet visitors.
Now let’s look at #5: How come it has such a low Alexa rank? Lots of readers, decent Page Rank… So what’s going on? I heard somewhere that for example, Digg users usually don’t have the Alexa toolbar installed. Maybe it is true for #5’s users too? I don’t know, but I’m definitely surprised. 115′000 daily readers can’t be wrong.
Conclusion
Statistics sometimes suck (sorry, I had to say it). And while all three companies (well, FeedBurner is part of Google now so…) have their own methods to measure the importance of a website on the world-wide web, RSS subscription is definitely an important variable. PageRank tells you that the website is mentioned everywhere. Alexa (somehow) tells you if the website is frequently visited or not. Now what about RSS feed subscriptions? It tells you that a website has loyal followers. If Kraft wanted to promote their off-line products, they would definitely prefer loyal visitors who would associate Kraft with quality after seeing their ad hundreds of times. Affiliate programs could also work well with websites with lots of subscriptors, since they know they can trust their beloved website, I mean, would you sign for a bank account by clicking on a random website’s referral banner, rather on one of your frequently visited websites?
All in all, with blogs taking an imporant slice of the WWW pie chart, FeedBurner’s feed count may really be PageRank for blogs. What do you think? Is there any other website you believe is worth comparing?
Note #2: The 5 blogs are in English, and are not definitely the biggest blogs. There is not an official list of FeedBurner reader count, so if you know of any website with a higher count, please let me know. Thanks!
Technorati Tags: Websoda analysis, FeedBurner RSS, PageRank, Alexa Rank
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