Are Your Favorite Sites Global Faves Too?

Curious to see how your blog, favorite social network, media source, or company website stacks up in today's growing Internet space? These are two great resources to learn how much traffic the Internet's leading websites (and in fact almost all websites) are garnering.

www.alexa.com

The gold standard of online traffic data. Alexa developed a proprietary ranking system averaging Reach and monthly Page Views - this means a site's rank reflects 1) number of users and 2) number of pages viewed. Read the full explanation: (Alexa Traffic Ranking Definition).

It's got a great feature where you can plot the growth trend for multiple sites to see how they compare to each other. (Notice how I say "growth trend" as opposed to "trend" w/o hesitation. I'd be interested to see some hard data on how many websites/ebusinesses are truly in a "mature" stage of their life cycle. My guess - not many.)

http://www.quantcast.com/

Quantcast uses a much friendlier user interface (in my humble, non IT-background opinion). My favorite feature is the clearly stated Unique Visitor and Unique Page View count, which Alexa does not display in its rankings. Plus, Quantcast's Top 100 U.S. sites provides an interesting 1-line demographic snapshot of the featured sites (Top 100 U.S. sites).

You can also "Quantify" your site/blog by becoming a member, enabling you to view detailed reports of your site's traffic. Of the top 100 sites in the U.S., 7 of them have already done so. I can't vouch for the service b/c I don't use it - my guess is Google Analytics still takes the cake in this arena.

Plus, I just subscribed to Quantify's blog. 90% of the posts are featurettes highlighting a "new addition" to the Quantify family. It's a great way to find some great new sites you might be interested in (although StumbleUpon's definitely a more efficient method to serve this purpose). A couple of recent discoveries:

ICanHasCheezburger.com--- My gut is telling me this site makes (MUCH) more $$ than it should. If that's the case, I can only say one thing (equal to the sentiment I have towards country singers) - good for them.

HairFinder.com --- Ditto above. It's really just a facade site driving traffic to Amazon book sales.
And they get 1.3MM global uniques / month!!! Oh affiliate Marketing, how I love thee!