I already wrote a Post denouncing a practice used by some website owners who try to impress advertisers and readers by publishing over inflated numbers regarding their online traffic (deceptive advertising is fraud, isn’t?). Or these numbers are completely made up out of nowhere! Or they are given without mentioning that the data comes from website “traffic analyzer programs” who admit themselves that they cannot identify in their data a human visitor from “robots”. Robots are “crawlers”, “spiders” hitting servers 24/7 legitimately, for example to index websites, or illegitimately stealing email addresses, sending spam to forums, delivering Spyware, etc. For example, it is considered that there are about 7800 search engines in the world hitting servers every day (3 represent 65% of worldwide searches). These are not human visits, but simply computer scripts presented to you by theses website owners as human visitors, which they are not. I gave you in this original Post our monthly real human visits (135,000 in January) and stated that Cyril Huze Blog is the most visited motorcycle news Blog in the world dedicated to the Custom V-twin industry.
Today, I want to mention a free independent tool accessible by all internet users, confirming our number 1 position, and with which, at any time, you can compare the ranking of any website versus its competitors (any website of any industry). Since the methodology used by Alexa Ranking is the same for all websites, it’s a level playing field. The ranking of a website versus others is an excellent mean for you to know which websites are powerful and popular, which are not, and appreciate the difference of audience between them, and know who is inflating his volume of traffic. Alexa Ranking is frequently used by independent 3rd party advertising companies to evaluate the popularity and volume of traffic of websites, and set the selling price of a banner or text link of those they represent (there are an estimated 95 million websites registered in the world, of course many inactive).
Alexa is a web information company giving you traffic rank (not number of visitors) of each website. The traffic rank of a website is a combined measure of Page Views and Users (Reach). The smaller the rank number, the higher is the traffic of a website. For example, the 5 most visited websites in the world are: 1- Yahoo 2- YouTube 3- Windows Live 4- Google 5- MySpace.
Follow is the ranking of a list of websites/blogs dedicated to motorcycle news mostly centered on custom motorcycles of the V-Twin industry. Some offer original news, like us. Others just aggregate or copy & paste news from other websites, including ours (and this without authorization and linking back!). Each blue link takes you to Alexa to check the ranking indicated. I remind you that the lowest the ranking number, the highest is the traffic of this website and that these rankings are accepted as consistent with the amount of traffic they have. (The number indicated between parenthesis is the “average last 3 month” ranking as of 03/27/08). Check them one per one.
1- Cyril Huze Blog (152,217) 2- Bikernet (197,093) 3- Hot Bike (490,141) 4- Helmet Hair Blog (513,960) 5- Why Bike Blog (517,697) 6- Paisano Publications including Easyriders and all other magazines (575,402) 7- Street Choppers (604,563) 8- Beach Cruiser (743,430) 9- Clutch And Chrome (1,088,483) 10- The Horse BackStreet Choppers (1,306,414) 11- American Iron Magazine (1,474,120) 12- AMD Dealer News (2,147,226) 13- Iron Works Magazine (2,799,267) 14- Cycle Source Magazine (3,502,408) 15- American Bagger (4,203,712) 16- Barnett’s Magazine (5,533,002) 17- American Cycle Magazine (6,089,923).
It means that this Blog is the highest ranked news force in the world for the Custom V-Twin industry. Following Alexa Taffic Ranking, it will take #2 Bikernet to pass the traffic of 44,876 websites (197,093 – 152,217) to reach our traffic volume. Or for #8 Beach Cruiser to pass the traffic of nothing less than 591,213 websites (743,430 – 152,217) before reaching our volume of visits. Or for #17 American Cycle Magazine to pass the traffic of a whooping 5,937,706 websites (6,089,923 – 152,217) to reach our online audience! .
You can have instant traffic rank of the websites you visit by downloading the Alexa Toolbar. It takes 1 minute. Then, a number in your browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox) will at all time gives you the traffic rank of any website in the world you are visiting.
Average Page Views: When you look at each website traffic rank, note the average page views per visitor. If a website has a home-page with intro and no motorcycle news displayed on it, and shows an average of only 1-page visited, it means 1 of 2 things. 1- At home-page 1st view, they perceive absolutely no interest in entering the site and exit immediately. 2- People arrived on it by accident because they were searching for something else, For example, most people searching for keywords “beach cruiser” (organic search) are probably looking for info on a bicycle (the international/universal public-at large and dictionary definition of a “beach cruiser“), not on a motorcycle, So, being misled, it’s quite evident that if they land on a motorcycle website, they will immediately leave the website concerned. These visitors are “unqualified” visitors visiting only one page. Our average page views per visitor is 23. It is due to the fact that visitors can access at any time all our original motorcycle news written since the Blog creation (now around 1200), directly from inside the site or through search engines (all our articles are permanently indexed by all major search engines and are forever accessible via keywords matching their content. It’s the reason why we receive every day comments on old posted articles. Same for the ads present on as many pages as there are written articles. The quality of the news content and readers interest can be measured by the number of pages visited and time spent reading them. For blogs and Forums, it can also be evaluated by the volume of comments. I will develop some of these aspects in another post.
By essence, traffic is fluctuating. Check it on a frequent basis to know how really popular a website is and to compare it versus its competitors.
Excellent work Cyril. My preferred source of info is your blog
Cyril. You work hard and I thank you for this. Your site is a great service to the custom motorcycle community.
Congrats Cyril.
Amazing results and stats! Very interesting.
I just got started on this whole blog thing recently. I find myself checking your site often to see what’s new. You keep it interesting.
Thanks!
I had no doubt this site was very popular. Most of my biker friends know about it. At first, I had some difficulties to understand the numbers. But now i got it.
I don’t ride anymore nor do I have very much interest in building/acquiring another bike but I visit this site at least twice a week. This site is addictive and always interesting!
Congratulations Cyril !
Nice Cyril,
Hope my norwegian blog too can become big one day 🙂
Bikerdata.com
bikerdata.com
Bikerdata.com has a traffic rank of: 993,079
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/bikerdata.com
Cyril:
By far you offer a great product, I actually catch myself wondering where the daily blog from you is if I have not gotten it by 7:30 am each day. I enjoy reading the info and comments, keep up the great work.
In regards to Alexa, you are so on target about miss representation of the numbers. I pulled my current rating as an FYI. (POSTED AT THE TOP OF THIS COMMENT) On of my pet pev’s is when someone states they receive one million HITS a day. Hits mean nothing, when a single page loads such as a home page that within its self could generate 45 to 100 hits based on the content of the home page. The key number that most website owns should be quoting is UNIGUE visitors per day and then how long did the stayed there and how many pages where viewed during that particular visit. That is value to an advertiser.
I base my sites value on the “call to action and click thru” that the motorcycle enthusiast take when they receive my VTwin E-News newsletter that goes out to a registered database of over 40,000 monthly subscribers. Instead of generating traffic to my site, I reach out to the motorcycle enthusiast through my Emailed VTwin E-NEWS monthly newsletter. Once the newsletter is received, I can actually see the amount of people that read the content, click the advertiser link to their site, and post a report to that advertiser.
Well Cryil I just started going to your site when you gave me a business card and then I gave you mine. And everyday I read your e-mail. I do not have a bike but I love to be the back seat rider. And ever since I came back from Bike-Week I make sure I read what you have to say and I love it. I read all of your info everyday and enjoy it very much so please keep it coming. Congratulations Cyril I love it.
Thanks
Jeff. You are absolutely right. To be more precise without being too technical. 1- Any professional and honest website owner would report only human visits, not robots log scripts counted and presented later as visitors. 2- As you say, the only thing that matters to an advertiser is a human visit, the number of pages visited, the time spent on each page, the frequency of visits by the same visitor, the number of new visitors, the geographic location of these visitors, the source of traffic (direct, organic search, links, etc). 3- As you also state, a hit is not a human visit. Servers are hit all day long by crawlers, robot texts, spam. When a human load a website page with 1 image or graphic, it’s one hit. But if the same page has 20 images or graphics, it’s counted as 20 hits for only 1 visit. So, the number of hits means nothing at all. 4- An advertiser is concerned by how "qualified" a reader is to buy his products. For example, beware of a US website written in English, whose incoming traffic comes mainly from foreign countries you could not locate on a world map, or banana republics where very few people speak english, where there are almost no motorcycle. It’s mainly spam, spyware, email address scripts to steal email addresses sent via servers located in those places to escape legal enforcement. The motorcycle industry online presence increases every day. I have no doubt that only professional website owners will survive and that advertisers will easily identify the sites offering value for their products.
Me too, I am addicted to Cyril’s blog. Need it every morning with my cup of coffee.
The best motorcycle read on the net. Love it.
Cyril man, you rule.
I have long been a fan of both your site and Bikernet.com. I think that it should come as no surprise for anyone to find out that the two of you are in the lead for the most visited news sites in our industry. Excellent work my friend!
C-
Addicted is the word. Addicted to custom motorcycles. Addicted to Cyril’s news. I am a subscriber and love the quick and useful daily info i get here. I also like the fact that the site is very well designed and very easy to navigate..
I find Cyril’s site a must do thing every morning. It’s interesting, informative, beneficial and has something for everyone. Having good information in a timely manner seems to be a necissity these days and it comes delivered to us.
I’m sure I’m one of many who appreciate yours and the people behind you hard work
Thanks mate.
Cyril Huze Comment:
Mar 28th, 2008 at 8:37 am
“Jeff. You are absolutely right”.
Cyril, I appreciate your response and had no doubt you would understand my input. With internet traffic being such a complex platform, it is very easy for a company trying to attract advertiser to mislead them. The majority of people have no clue and take their word. I for one pride myself in being truthful with my numbers and with hard work know there will be an eventual pay off.
Your posting of this blog will help educate people and make them aware.
In my 60 hr plus work week I spend about 30 minutes on the internet, half of that is on this blog. Cyril you save me a LOT of time! I also know how many sales are generated from my web ‘hits’. peace
Oops! I spend at least 15 minutes every day reading the new posts. But I am self employed…
Congratulations Cyril , like the others say ” I`m addicted ” , first thing in the AM, coffee, pain pills and Cyril`s Blog.
I go to and read many blogs. I find each one has their own style. Much like the difference between The Times and The Wall Street Journal. I find each one interesting in their own right. Some have mostly pictures and little content and some have pictures and a lot of content. And in between. As far as rating I know not a thing about that. But I did read in your post something that set me back. That is the statement (misled) about beach cruiser, Yes there is a bicycle named beach cruiser. But I found your site reading blogs as I did the beach cruiser. I went to googles motorcycle blogs punched in motorcycle and many and I mean many blogs came up. A lot of them I had never heard of. So I scrowed on them and at # 11 I finally came to a site that mentioned the beach cruiser. It was in a site called Wikio from France with an article from the beach cruiser on S&S’s wedge block. Now how is the beach cruiser mis leading anyone? Respectfully Knucklehead
Knuclehead. You state that you made a search on keywords “motorcycle blogs”. Logically, you get a list “motorcycle blogs” results. You did the right thing. You didn’t search “beach cruiser” to find a motorcycle blog website. Right? And if you look for a beach cruiser bicycle you are going to search with at least the 2 words “beach cruiser”. And what do you expect to get as results? Of course a list of “beach cruiser” bicycle websites. When you search “motorcycle websites” would you expect to get as a result a list of bicycle websites? Of course not. Got it?
There are website owners called Peter S. Furman a.k.a. “Beach” and Andrea E. Howard a.k.a. "Train’ who continue to publish their website traffic statistics using a free program called “Webalizer” without mentioning to the public that:
1- "Webalizer" generates statistics that do not differentiate between human visitors and robots. As a result all reported metrics are much higher than those due to people alone. Read by going to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webalizer#Criticism.
2- The creators of "Webalizer” state clearly their program drawbacks and write that “Their products are not designed to publicly report a site in comparison to others”.
For a full explanation of website traffic, read: “What Some website Owners Don’t Want You to Know” at: http://www.cyrilhuzeblog.com/2008/02/11/website-traffic-what-some-motorcycle-website-owners-dont-want-you-to-know/
Since "Beach" and "Train" have been advised at least by me (email 01/30/07) and are already perfectly aware that these statistics are of no value from the point of view of advertisers and of readers, their statements have for objective to mislead people.( "Beach" states that "Train" is an IT expert). These people refuse to let me comment in their website. It says a lot.
In addition, the 2 same individuals posted:
On Saturday March 29 at 8.22 PM:
"We DON’T fabricate numbers. We are truthful to the best of our knowledge. You can see (no source mentioned) that our numbers (number of what?) are over 17,000 for march 08. with the month not yet over. We projected about a week ago that the hits (what is the definition of a hit?) should approach 20,000 for the month. We will see how close that estimate was at month end.
On Sunday March 30 at 8.53 AM, they posted again:
Publishing Webalizer Data showing no more 17,000 or 20,000 visitors (hits?) for March 08 as stated the evening before, but a whopping 85,212 visitors. Conclusion: Miraculously, in less than 12 hours, their data went from 17,000 for the month to 85,212 visitors!!! So, while they were sleeping, 68,212 new visitors arrived!!! (85,212 – 17,000). More new visitors (hits?) than what they pretend to get in 4 months!!! Very credible.
Now they have a change of mind. 17,000 is the number of hits on the banners. What means "hits". Viewed? (How do they know the banners were viewed 17,000 times? So, 68,212 would not have seen anything? Why?). Or does it mean "clicks" (How do they know how many clicks on the banners?). Any tangible proof to all these statements? None to this day.
My father teached me that jealous people always lie, and that liars are always caught. Some people are jealous of your sucess, so they lie. And you caught them. I love your website and it is one of my favorite motorcycle reads.
Thanks again for the great blog!!! #1, CONGRATS!!
Steve “Brewdude” Garn
BREW Bikes