With Father's Day just around the corner (only 23 shopping days left!) I thought it would be helpful to put together a list of the Top Online Golf Stores (hint, hint, hint...). If you start shopping now you'll be able to get Dad that new driver (TaylorMade Burner) he's been talking about and you won't have to pay for expedited shipping.
But first, a word from our sponsor, amazon.com:
Top Online Golf Stores
1. Golf Smith - golfsmith.com
Golf Smith, founded in 1967, has been around for quite some time, even before the age of the Internet. They have managed to parlay their offline success into an online success to become the number one online golf store.
Alexa Rank: 15,145
2. The Golf Warehouse - tgw.com
The Golf Warehouse is the only store in this roundup that I have used and I can say that they had what I wanted and the price was right. Can't beat that.
Alexa Rank: 18,720
3. Rock Bottom Golf - rockbottomgolf.com
Rock Bottom Golf started off as an E-Bay store and has since grown into the third largest online golf store. The site features an animated mascot, Scratch, a caveman with a bone through his nose that points you to the rock bottom deals.
Alexa Rank: 53,696
4. Golf Galaxy - golfgalaxy.com
Coming in right behind Rock Bottom Golf is Golf Galaxy. I was unfamiliar with Golf Galaxy prior to compiling this list, but it appears they have been online since 1997 and have been doing quite well both online and offline with 90 stores in 31 states.
Alexa Rank: 56,716
5. Golf Balls.com - golfballs.com
If you find it amazing that a site selling golf balls is the 5th most popular online golf store, you aren't alone. Originally started as an online-only store in 1995, selling used golf balls, golfballs.com has expanded to selling a wide variety of golf accessories with a specialty in custom imprinted golf balls.
Alexa Rank: 74,415
6. Edwin Watts Golf - edwinwattsgolf.com
Originally founded offline in 1968, Edwin Watts golf comes in at #6 in our roundup of the top online golf stores. With 71 stores in 10 states, EWG is a large retailer that has grown into a significant online presence.
Alexa Rank: 77,283
7. Global Golf - globalgolf.com
Global Golf is another E-bay success story. Originally opened in 2001, Global Golf has now outgrown it's origins on E-Bay and is large online retailer of used golf equipment (plus some new stuff as well.) Looking for an "almost new" driver. Global Golf has you covered.
Alexa Rank: 87,977
That's it for our list today. Don't forget your Dad! Oh, and in case you were wondering which top online golf store has the best price for that TaylorMade Burner driver, it is Rock Bottom Golf, here. ;-)
Friday, May 29, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Bit.ly and Tinyurl.com - Followup
I just wanted to quickly follow up on my previous post about bit.ly and tinyurl.com on May 7. At the time of that post Tinyurl was the undisputed king of the hill of all the URL shorteners (sites that take your long URLs and make them short for convenient posting to blogs, facebook, twitter, etc..) I predicted that Twitter's switch from Tinyurl as the default URL shortener to Bit.ly was going to upset Tinyurl's leadership position. So how did I do?
Take a look at the Daily Pageviews graph below.
In just one short month Bit.ly has gone from having 1/3 of the pageviews of Tinyurl to having 30% more.
When it comes to pageviews, Bit.ly is now king of the hill.
When it comes to visitors, Tinyurl still wins, but not for long. Alexa's Daily Reach graph indicates a steady decline in Tinyurl visitors and a meteoric rise for Bit.ly. In just two more weeks Bit.ly will take over to become the undisputed king of the URL shortening hill.
I am not acquainted with the details of the deal between Twitter and Bit.ly, or the reasons behind the switch from Tinyurl, but I am certain of this. This seemingly minor change represents a big deal to both Tinyurl and Bit.ly.
Take a look at the Daily Pageviews graph below.
In just one short month Bit.ly has gone from having 1/3 of the pageviews of Tinyurl to having 30% more.When it comes to pageviews, Bit.ly is now king of the hill.
When it comes to visitors, Tinyurl still wins, but not for long. Alexa's Daily Reach graph indicates a steady decline in Tinyurl visitors and a meteoric rise for Bit.ly. In just two more weeks Bit.ly will take over to become the undisputed king of the URL shortening hill.
I am not acquainted with the details of the deal between Twitter and Bit.ly, or the reasons behind the switch from Tinyurl, but I am certain of this. This seemingly minor change represents a big deal to both Tinyurl and Bit.ly.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
New Help and Forums on Alexa
Today Alexa has released new community features in our help section. The goal is to provide an environment where community members can freely exchange thoughts, ideas, knowledge, and opinions. To get started, go to http://www.alexa.com/help. From there you can browse the forums, post new topics and reply to topics that have been posted by others. We will be checking in on the forums on a regular basis to pitch in answers and to hear what you have to say.
It is our hope that you find the new help and forums to be both easy to use and helpful to you as you make use of Alexa's products and services. We place tremendous value on this environment as a medium of information exchange and connection point for you, your peers, and the Alexa team.
Check it out now and let us know what you think.
It is our hope that you find the new help and forums to be both easy to use and helpful to you as you make use of Alexa's products and services. We place tremendous value on this environment as a medium of information exchange and connection point for you, your peers, and the Alexa team.
Check it out now and let us know what you think.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Search Engine Optimization Companies
Alexa's CEO, Niall O'Driscoll, once said to me "If you want to know how good a search engine optimization company is, type 'search engine optimization' into Google and see who comes up first." The logic is infallible. The same logic applies to Dentists and Barbers... if you walk into a barbershop and the barber has awful hair, walk out.
So I thought it would be interesting to take a quick look at three of the leading Search Engine Optimization sites out there, seochat.com, seobook.com and seomoz.org, and see what they do and how well they practice what they preach.
As a point of comparison, and to make sure this test is somewhat fair, each of the sites have similar traffic, with 3 month Alexa Ranks between 3500 and 2500, and daily visits between an average of 75K to 120K.
Test 1: Who ranks best for "search engine optimization"
Try it yourself. Search for "search engine optimization" on Google and see which of the three sites comes up first. Seochat comes up as the third result on the page, behind wikipedia and behind a Google article on search engine optimization. Seobook.com and seomoz.org are farther down the rankings. The graph below confirms it, seochat gets a much larger percent of their traffic from search engines than its competitors:
Surprisingly, to me anyway, seochat.com also wins this contest if you search for "seo".
Test 1 Winner: seochat.com
Test 2: Who has the most "high quality" links?
If you want traffic from Google you are going to have to work on more than your keywords. You are going to have to get a lot of high quality links pointing to your site. That, in short, is how Google will know whether your site is important or not, and it is how Google decides which site with the "right" keywords appears at the top of the results. So how did our sites do?
Let me give you a little help reading this graph. I have broken links into three types, ranging from most important (Links in Top 1,000) at the top, to least important (Links in Top 100,000) at the bottom. Starting at the top, you can see the seomoz.org wins the most links from sites that are in the Top 1,000. Seomoz.org also has the most links overall, giving it an important edge in search engine rankings.
Test 2 Winner: seomoz.org
Test 3: Which site has the most appeal?
Sometimes we can get so wrapped up talking about "keyword optimization" and "link building strategies" that we can forget about perhaps the most important factor of all. Appeal -- that certain "something" that keeps people on your page and keeps them coming back. How else are you going to get links to your site and get more traffic if your site lacks appeal?
But how do you measure appeal? I like to measure appeal with Bounce Rate (do people "bounce" away after visiting) and Time on Site. How did our sites do? Let's start with bounce rate:
With bounce rate a lower number is better, indicating that few people "bounce". It looks like all of these sites have a relatively high bounce rate, at 50% or above, with seobook.com with the largest bounce rate, at 70%. Before being too hard on seobook.com, their bounce rate is no doubt due to the "hard sell" interstitial sales technique that they use on their site. The first time I saw that form I was inclined to hit the back button, and if others do the same it will cause seobook.com's bounce rate to rise. But what is unknown to me, and perhaps more important than a good bounce rate, is how well seobook.com converts visitors to leads via this method.
One of the consequences of search engine optimization is that as you get really good at it your bounce rate is likely to go up. It might take a second for that to sink in. Your bounce rate will go up because you will be getting more and more traffic from search, and it will be less targeted traffic. All of these new visitors to your site are less likely to stick around and become customers.
Next up on our measure of appeal is Time on Site. How did our sites do?
With "Time on Site" you want to have a larger number, indicating that people are sticking around, making pageturns and hopefully becoming customers. What stands out here is that seobook.com has the lowest time on site, by a long shot. Again, this is likely due to their aggressive interstitial. The winner of the Time on Site category is seomoz.org with over 4.5 minutes on average.
Appeal is what I would call a leading indicator. If you score well in these areas you are likely to garner more links and have a shot at the top of the rankings. It is where people should start first when looking at their Internet Marketing efforts... building a site with content that people want to link to and come back to.
Test 3 winner: seomoz.org
Overall Winner
So who is the overall winner? The site with the most traffic wins, and that site is:
Surprise: seobook.com
Despite losing each of our three tests, seobook.com gets more traffic than seochat.com and seomoz.org. But how do they do it? Loyalty. Despite getting less traffic from search engines, and despite having fewer links than seomoz, and despite scaring away potential customers with aggressive marketing, seobook is doing quite well. They are converting visitors to customers, and turning those customers into regular visitors.
The take-away lesson is that good SEO is important, but it can't compete with a loyal and engaged user-base. Seobook.com is a perfect case in point.
So I thought it would be interesting to take a quick look at three of the leading Search Engine Optimization sites out there, seochat.com, seobook.com and seomoz.org, and see what they do and how well they practice what they preach.
As a point of comparison, and to make sure this test is somewhat fair, each of the sites have similar traffic, with 3 month Alexa Ranks between 3500 and 2500, and daily visits between an average of 75K to 120K.
Test 1: Who ranks best for "search engine optimization"
Try it yourself. Search for "search engine optimization" on Google and see which of the three sites comes up first. Seochat comes up as the third result on the page, behind wikipedia and behind a Google article on search engine optimization. Seobook.com and seomoz.org are farther down the rankings. The graph below confirms it, seochat gets a much larger percent of their traffic from search engines than its competitors:
Surprisingly, to me anyway, seochat.com also wins this contest if you search for "seo".
Test 1 Winner: seochat.com
Test 2: Who has the most "high quality" links?
If you want traffic from Google you are going to have to work on more than your keywords. You are going to have to get a lot of high quality links pointing to your site. That, in short, is how Google will know whether your site is important or not, and it is how Google decides which site with the "right" keywords appears at the top of the results. So how did our sites do?
Let me give you a little help reading this graph. I have broken links into three types, ranging from most important (Links in Top 1,000) at the top, to least important (Links in Top 100,000) at the bottom. Starting at the top, you can see the seomoz.org wins the most links from sites that are in the Top 1,000. Seomoz.org also has the most links overall, giving it an important edge in search engine rankings.
Test 2 Winner: seomoz.org
Test 3: Which site has the most appeal?
Sometimes we can get so wrapped up talking about "keyword optimization" and "link building strategies" that we can forget about perhaps the most important factor of all. Appeal -- that certain "something" that keeps people on your page and keeps them coming back. How else are you going to get links to your site and get more traffic if your site lacks appeal?
But how do you measure appeal? I like to measure appeal with Bounce Rate (do people "bounce" away after visiting) and Time on Site. How did our sites do? Let's start with bounce rate:
With bounce rate a lower number is better, indicating that few people "bounce". It looks like all of these sites have a relatively high bounce rate, at 50% or above, with seobook.com with the largest bounce rate, at 70%. Before being too hard on seobook.com, their bounce rate is no doubt due to the "hard sell" interstitial sales technique that they use on their site. The first time I saw that form I was inclined to hit the back button, and if others do the same it will cause seobook.com's bounce rate to rise. But what is unknown to me, and perhaps more important than a good bounce rate, is how well seobook.com converts visitors to leads via this method.
One of the consequences of search engine optimization is that as you get really good at it your bounce rate is likely to go up. It might take a second for that to sink in. Your bounce rate will go up because you will be getting more and more traffic from search, and it will be less targeted traffic. All of these new visitors to your site are less likely to stick around and become customers.
Next up on our measure of appeal is Time on Site. How did our sites do?
With "Time on Site" you want to have a larger number, indicating that people are sticking around, making pageturns and hopefully becoming customers. What stands out here is that seobook.com has the lowest time on site, by a long shot. Again, this is likely due to their aggressive interstitial. The winner of the Time on Site category is seomoz.org with over 4.5 minutes on average.
Appeal is what I would call a leading indicator. If you score well in these areas you are likely to garner more links and have a shot at the top of the rankings. It is where people should start first when looking at their Internet Marketing efforts... building a site with content that people want to link to and come back to.
Test 3 winner: seomoz.org
Overall Winner
So who is the overall winner? The site with the most traffic wins, and that site is:
Surprise: seobook.com
Despite losing each of our three tests, seobook.com gets more traffic than seochat.com and seomoz.org. But how do they do it? Loyalty. Despite getting less traffic from search engines, and despite having fewer links than seomoz, and despite scaring away potential customers with aggressive marketing, seobook is doing quite well. They are converting visitors to customers, and turning those customers into regular visitors.
The take-away lesson is that good SEO is important, but it can't compete with a loyal and engaged user-base. Seobook.com is a perfect case in point.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Movie Websites: Good Predictor of Box Office
When I looked through the Alexa Movers and Shakers this morning I noticed that we had some movie websites in the list and it reminded me of a post I've been meaning to do for some time now, comparing traffic to the movie website to box office. I have speculated that traffic to a movie website will be a good predictor of its opening box office. Let's take a look.
Angels & Demons vs. Star Trek
For the purposes of this comparison I am going to look at peak traffic to the movie website(s) and at opening weekend box office.
Star Trek's opening weekend is the clear winner with almost 40% more box office. But is the same true if you look at peak traffic to the website?
Yes. Star Trek (startrekmovie.com) clearly received more daily peak pageviews than Angels & Demons (angelsanddemons.com). The peak day for traffic to movie sites is typically Friday of the opening weekend, as it was in both of these cases.
OK, that was fun, but let's take another recent set of movies and see if the theory holds up.
17 Again vs. Monsters vs. Aliens
Clear winner in box office dollars is Monsters vs. Aliens. What about the movie websites?
The theory holds up. If a movie website gets more traffic it is going to rake in more at the box office. I'll keep my eyes open for an exception to this rule. Night at the Museum is coming out this weekend and judging from its website traffic it will have a great opening weekend... you heard it here first.
Angels & Demons vs. Star Trek
For the purposes of this comparison I am going to look at peak traffic to the movie website(s) and at opening weekend box office.
Star Trek's opening weekend is the clear winner with almost 40% more box office. But is the same true if you look at peak traffic to the website?
Yes. Star Trek (startrekmovie.com) clearly received more daily peak pageviews than Angels & Demons (angelsanddemons.com). The peak day for traffic to movie sites is typically Friday of the opening weekend, as it was in both of these cases.
OK, that was fun, but let's take another recent set of movies and see if the theory holds up.
17 Again vs. Monsters vs. Aliens
Clear winner in box office dollars is Monsters vs. Aliens. What about the movie websites?
The theory holds up. If a movie website gets more traffic it is going to rake in more at the box office. I'll keep my eyes open for an exception to this rule. Night at the Museum is coming out this weekend and judging from its website traffic it will have a great opening weekend... you heard it here first.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Rich | Poor
I thought it would be interesting to look at two different types of sites today, ones that attract a wealthy audience, and ones that attract the poor.
$Rich
I picked 5 sites that have an audience heavily skewed toward the wealthy, including linkedin.com, wsj.com, expedia.com, yelp.com and cbssports.com. These sites appear to have nothing in common. But dig a little deeper and you see that they all attract a very wealthy audience, consisting largely of people making over $100K per year.
So how do they do it? How do these sites attract a wealthy audience. They each appeal to different aspects of a wealthy lifestyle. Linked in appeals to business people. Wall Street Journal appeals to people with investments. Expedia appeals to people who can afford to travel. Yelp appeals to people who eat out a lot. CBS Sports... well that one is a mystery to me.
Poor
Here we have five sites that are skewed toward people earning less than $30k per year, including mininova.org, onemanga.com, gamefaqs.com, y8.com and ultimate-guitar.com. You may not have heard of these sites before, but they are all very popular sites, each getting in excess of 3 million unique visitors per month. So why haven't you heard of them? I know a little something about Alexa's demographics and the reason you haven't heard of these sites is because you, a reader of the Alexa Blog, are unlikely to be under the age of 25 or earn less than $30k per year.
So what do these sites do that attracts the young and poor? Mininova is a "torrent" download site where people can go to find free downloads, mostly of movies. The mere mention of the word torrent sends the older and wealthy crowd running in the opposite direction. In contrast, Hulu, which is a free video site where people can watch TV shows and movies, appeals to the wealthy with its clean and simple interface and no mention of torrents. One Manga, the second site on our poor list is a Japanese comics site, which as you can imagine appeals to the younger crowd. Game FAQs is a community help site about video games. Y8 is a free online game site. Ultimate Guitar is a free sheet music site geared toward aspiring rock stars.
Advertisers are a pretty smart bunch and they know who it is they want to reach. You won't find any Lexus ads on the poor sites and conversely, you won't find any Taco Bell ads on the Rich sites. Each site's demographics determines who will want to advertise there. The question for you is what kind of site are you building and who will it attract? The answer to that question will ultimately decide who will be willing to advertise on your site and how much money you can potentially earn via advertising.
$Rich
I picked 5 sites that have an audience heavily skewed toward the wealthy, including linkedin.com, wsj.com, expedia.com, yelp.com and cbssports.com. These sites appear to have nothing in common. But dig a little deeper and you see that they all attract a very wealthy audience, consisting largely of people making over $100K per year.
So how do they do it? How do these sites attract a wealthy audience. They each appeal to different aspects of a wealthy lifestyle. Linked in appeals to business people. Wall Street Journal appeals to people with investments. Expedia appeals to people who can afford to travel. Yelp appeals to people who eat out a lot. CBS Sports... well that one is a mystery to me.
Poor
Here we have five sites that are skewed toward people earning less than $30k per year, including mininova.org, onemanga.com, gamefaqs.com, y8.com and ultimate-guitar.com. You may not have heard of these sites before, but they are all very popular sites, each getting in excess of 3 million unique visitors per month. So why haven't you heard of them? I know a little something about Alexa's demographics and the reason you haven't heard of these sites is because you, a reader of the Alexa Blog, are unlikely to be under the age of 25 or earn less than $30k per year.
So what do these sites do that attracts the young and poor? Mininova is a "torrent" download site where people can go to find free downloads, mostly of movies. The mere mention of the word torrent sends the older and wealthy crowd running in the opposite direction. In contrast, Hulu, which is a free video site where people can watch TV shows and movies, appeals to the wealthy with its clean and simple interface and no mention of torrents. One Manga, the second site on our poor list is a Japanese comics site, which as you can imagine appeals to the younger crowd. Game FAQs is a community help site about video games. Y8 is a free online game site. Ultimate Guitar is a free sheet music site geared toward aspiring rock stars.
Advertisers are a pretty smart bunch and they know who it is they want to reach. You won't find any Lexus ads on the poor sites and conversely, you won't find any Taco Bell ads on the Rich sites. Each site's demographics determines who will want to advertise there. The question for you is what kind of site are you building and who will it attract? The answer to that question will ultimately decide who will be willing to advertise on your site and how much money you can potentially earn via advertising.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Battle of the URL Shorteners
In the social web it seems there is nothing quite as fun as sharing URLs. With the rise of sites like 
Twitter, which limits communications to only 140 characters, and the often long length of URLs, there is a new breed of sites coming online that shorten URLs into tiny snippets of their former selves.
Take this URL for example, on Yahoo! about the Manny Ramirez drug scandal: http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ys-ramirezsuspension050709&prov=yhoo&type=lgns. If you were to post that URL to Twitter, 85 or your 140 character limit would already be used up, leaving you just 55 characters to type in your witty comment.
Along come the URL shorteners. Go to Tinyurl.com, copy that 85 character long Yahoo! URL into the text box, click the "Make Tiny URL" button, and receive this alternative tiny URL, http://tinyurl.com/cmrt9s, just 25 characters in length. That leaves me with 120 characters for my witty remarks.
Tinyurl has been around the Web for a long time, well before twitter came along. It has been a simple and single-purpose website. But, now that Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and so many other social sites have reached the big time, something new is happening. The sharing of URLs has reached critical mass, and services like Tinyurl have an opportunity to grow into something altogether new.
The sharing of URLs online is no longer just random unimportant noise. It is news. It is a pulse, indicating what is happening in a society. Take Tweetmeme for example. They get it. They treat all URLs shared via Twitter as news, and sort the most popular shared URLs to the top. Go to Tweetmeme any time of day and you can see what the society thinks is important right now, at this particular moment. That is because what we share via Twitter, in aggregate, is news.
Does Tinyurl understand how sites like Twitter have changed what it means to be an URL
shortener? Upstart URL shortener Bit.ly seems to get it. They understand that the act of sharing an URL is an explicit act indicating interest in an URL and that there is more to be done with that information. Here are some new features of Bit.ly that prove my point:
Until now, Tinyurl has been the biggest of the URL shorteners by a comfortable margin. I suspect, with this recent change by Twitter, more people are going to see the advantages of Bit.ly and start switching over. It won't happen overnight, but having Twitter repeatedly show your URL to millions daily is bound to have an effect on users. Looking at the chart to the left you can see the relative size of the two services, Bit.ly and Tinyurl.com, measured in visitors, and the amount of overlap between the two. Two months from now I expect that green circle to be a lot larger.
Another less discussed effect of having Twitter default to Bit.ly as an URL shortener is the profound effect it will have on Bit.ly's search engine placement. Search engines always try to sort the important links to the top, and one of the most important measures of a site/link's importance is the number of links pointing to it (this is a somewhat simplified explanation, but mostly right.)
As you can see from the data below, Tinyurl.com has been benefiting from the Twitter relationship.
Number of sites linking to Tinyurl.com and Bit.ly that are in the Alexa Top 1000:
Bit.ly will soon have tens of millions of links being pointed to it, all because somebody typed some link into Twitter, Twitter turned it into a Bit.ly URL, and somebody shared that shortened URL on a page, whether Twitter, Facebook, Digg, a personal blog or other. Soon, all the search engines will see Bit.ly as an important Web presence, causing it to get even more traffic from search. It is a virtuous circle and Bit.ly is the beneficiary.
It is still way to early to call a winner here, but the next six months will be an interesting time as these URL shorteners reinvent what it means to be an URL shortener, fight over market share, and come up with business models that allow them to sustain their business for the long haul.
Twitter, which limits communications to only 140 characters, and the often long length of URLs, there is a new breed of sites coming online that shorten URLs into tiny snippets of their former selves.Take this URL for example, on Yahoo! about the Manny Ramirez drug scandal: http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ys-ramirezsuspension050709&prov=yhoo&type=lgns. If you were to post that URL to Twitter, 85 or your 140 character limit would already be used up, leaving you just 55 characters to type in your witty comment.
Along come the URL shorteners. Go to Tinyurl.com, copy that 85 character long Yahoo! URL into the text box, click the "Make Tiny URL" button, and receive this alternative tiny URL, http://tinyurl.com/cmrt9s, just 25 characters in length. That leaves me with 120 characters for my witty remarks.
Tinyurl has been around the Web for a long time, well before twitter came along. It has been a simple and single-purpose website. But, now that Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and so many other social sites have reached the big time, something new is happening. The sharing of URLs has reached critical mass, and services like Tinyurl have an opportunity to grow into something altogether new.
The sharing of URLs online is no longer just random unimportant noise. It is news. It is a pulse, indicating what is happening in a society. Take Tweetmeme for example. They get it. They treat all URLs shared via Twitter as news, and sort the most popular shared URLs to the top. Go to Tweetmeme any time of day and you can see what the society thinks is important right now, at this particular moment. That is because what we share via Twitter, in aggregate, is news.
Does Tinyurl understand how sites like Twitter have changed what it means to be an URL
shortener? Upstart URL shortener Bit.ly seems to get it. They understand that the act of sharing an URL is an explicit act indicating interest in an URL and that there is more to be done with that information. Here are some new features of Bit.ly that prove my point:- Bit.ly remembers the URLs I've shortened. When I go back to Bit.ly they are all there for me to peruse.
- Clicking on "info" shows me stats for the shortened URL. How many times was it clicked? Where were people located geographically when they clicked my url? What services were people on when they on when they clicked my shortened url? Who else shortened that URL. And so much more.
- Bit.ly submits all shortened urls to OpenCalais to be semantically classified, categorized and tagged.
Until now, Tinyurl has been the biggest of the URL shorteners by a comfortable margin. I suspect, with this recent change by Twitter, more people are going to see the advantages of Bit.ly and start switching over. It won't happen overnight, but having Twitter repeatedly show your URL to millions daily is bound to have an effect on users. Looking at the chart to the left you can see the relative size of the two services, Bit.ly and Tinyurl.com, measured in visitors, and the amount of overlap between the two. Two months from now I expect that green circle to be a lot larger.Another less discussed effect of having Twitter default to Bit.ly as an URL shortener is the profound effect it will have on Bit.ly's search engine placement. Search engines always try to sort the important links to the top, and one of the most important measures of a site/link's importance is the number of links pointing to it (this is a somewhat simplified explanation, but mostly right.)
As you can see from the data below, Tinyurl.com has been benefiting from the Twitter relationship.
Number of sites linking to Tinyurl.com and Bit.ly that are in the Alexa Top 1000:
- Tinyurl - 386
- Bit.ly - 9
Bit.ly will soon have tens of millions of links being pointed to it, all because somebody typed some link into Twitter, Twitter turned it into a Bit.ly URL, and somebody shared that shortened URL on a page, whether Twitter, Facebook, Digg, a personal blog or other. Soon, all the search engines will see Bit.ly as an important Web presence, causing it to get even more traffic from search. It is a virtuous circle and Bit.ly is the beneficiary.
It is still way to early to call a winner here, but the next six months will be an interesting time as these URL shorteners reinvent what it means to be an URL shortener, fight over market share, and come up with business models that allow them to sustain their business for the long haul.
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