Billiard Website Rankings!

[Colin Colenso]

I was doing some data collection and thought you guys might be interested. Let me know if I have missed any sites.

This data comes from www.alexa.com which is a branch of google. It is not particularly accurate for sites with ranks over 10,000 but it is a reasonable indication of overall traffic to sites.

Billiard Website Alexa Ratings June 20, 2004

1. www.top147.com = 19,380 (Includes www.cuezine.com )
2. www.insidepool.com = 25,686
3. www.worldsnooker.com = 26,577
4. www.poolfanatic.com = 69,989
5. www.azbilliards.com = 72,515
6. www.easypooltutor.com = 116,000
7. www.embassysnooker.com = 125,000
8. www.globalsnookercentre.co.uk = 131,000
9. www.110sport.com/snooker = 141,000
10. www.billiardsdigest.com = 142,000
11. www.laboremus.no/snooker/home.shtml = 178,000
12. www.bca-pool.com = 180,000
13. www.poolplayers.com = 267,000
14. www.wpba.com = 355,000

Note: www.Top147.com is a Chinese only version snooker and pool website. My own website www.cuezine.com is hosted on the same server and is available in English and Chinese.

 

[azhousepro]

Alexa is tied in with Google and can therefore be manipulated to show a site as having a higher ranking than it truly has.

There is at least one site ranked higher than mine that I know for a fact gets much less traffic than I do. I suppose I could spend some time working to try to get my site ranked higher on Alexa, but to be honest I am really kind of busy working on the site itself.

Mike

 

[Purdman]

Alexa is tied in with Google and can therefore be manipulated to show a site as having a higher ranking than it truly has.

There is at least one site ranked higher than mine that I know for a fact gets much less traffic than I do. I suppose I could spend some time working to try to get my site ranked higher on Alexa, but to be honest I am really kind of busy working on the site itself.

Mike

Mike, you just keep doing what you are doing. You are doing a great job and I for one, appriciate it very much. I would rather be the best than the most popular anyway.
Has Silencer left the building or did he finally get a job? Just curious.

Don P.

 

[Malice]

Alexa is an Amazon property, not Google. Their ratings are derived from users installing the Alexa Toolbar, which reports back to Alexa on where users surf.

If you don't have the Alexa Toolbar, your vote is not counted. I personally have never encountered a PC with Alexa installed.

Alexa is meaningless for smaller, niche sites.

 

[sjm]

I was doing some data collection and thought you guys might be interested. Let me know if I have missed any sites.

This data comes from www.alexa.com which is a branch of google. It is not particularly accurate for sites with ranks over 10,000 but it is a reasonable indication of overall traffic to sites.

Billiard Website Alexa Ratings June 20, 2004

1. www.top147.com = 19,380 (Includes www.cuezine.com )
2. www.insidepool.com = 25,686
3. www.worldsnooker.com = 26,577
4. www.poolfanatic.com = 69,989
5. www.azbilliards.com = 72,515
6. www.easypooltutor.com = 116,000
7. www.embassysnooker.com = 125,000
8. www.globalsnookercentre.co.uk = 131,000
9. www.110sport.com/snooker = 141,000
10. www.billiardsdigest.com = 142,000
11. www.laboremus.no/snooker/home.shtml = 178,000
12. www.bca-pool.com = 180,000
13. www.poolplayers.com = 267,000
14. www.wpba.com = 355,000

Note: www.Top147.com is a Chinese only version snooker and pool website. My own website www.cuezine.com is hosted on the same server and is available in English and Chinese.

The website of the Tri-State tour in the New York area has a pretty big following. That would be www.tristate-tour.com.

AZB is the best of the sites. Take a deep bow, Mike.

 

[JohnBCA]

I hate to disagree with this survay, but there is no way in H$## that Inside Pool's website is ranked higher than Mikes. Just no way.

 

[Colin Colenso]

Alexa reliability

I hate to disagree with this survay, but there is no way in H$## that Inside Pool's website is ranked higher than Mikes. Just no way.

Interesting to hear some of the comments about site use/popularity from those who are most familiar with the sites.

Alexa can be way out if you a few very regular posters using the Alexa toolbar. Even a very low traffic site can get to 30,000 this way.

I wouldn't be surprised if AZ was the most trafficked pool website, though poolfanatic.com has twice as many forum members (Not as many daily posts though at the moment and not much in the news and content areas. World Snooker clearly gets a lot of traffic during the snooker season.

The big numbers though are in China, my site www.cuezine.com already has over 24,000 subscribed members and the net population here will be 4 times larger in 5 years. Chinese sites now hold 5 of the world's top 10 positions and rapidly climbing. Sina.com and Baidu.com have recently passed google to be no.3 and 4 in the world.

 

[azhousepro]

Colin, I have no doubt that you get more traffic than I do. Pool is such a huge game out there and you have a much larger net population to target.

I imagine that worldsnooker is also getting a very large amount of traffic during snooker season.

I have seen the ads on some of the other sites to try to get people to install the Alexa tool bar which will help their numbers drastically. While I would love to be recognized as the #1 billiards site on Alexa, I don't lose sleep over it at night. I have worked hard for the past few years to make AzB the best site I can and I am willing to put my site up against any other site trying to do the same thing that I am doing.

Mike

 

[Zims Rack]

TAP! TAP! TAP!

Zim

Colin, I have no doubt that you get more traffic than I do. Pool is such a huge game out there and you have a much larger net population to target.

I imagine that worldsnooker is also getting a very large amount of traffic during snooker season.

I have seen the ads on some of the other sites to try to get people to install the Alexa tool bar which will help their numbers drastically. While I would love to be recognized as the #1 billiards site on Alexa, I don't lose sleep over it at night. I have worked hard for the past few years to make AzB the best site I can and I am willing to put my site up against any other site trying to do the same thing that I am doing.

Mike

 

[piglit]

Mike, you just keep doing what you are doing. You are doing a great job and I for one, appriciate it very much. I would rather be the best than the most popular anyway.
Has Silencer left the building or did he finally get a job? Just curious.

Don P.

That's right, Mike- we all owe you a BIG THANKS for running the best durn pool site on the web. We luv ya, man!!

-pigy

 

[Colin Colenso]

Mike,
I agree with you on every point. You've done a great job on this site with limited resources. The economics of this business is tough.

Even with the numbers in China, you have to take into account that CPM rates are generally 1/20th to 1/100th of advertising returns in the US.

For now, it is pretty hard to get any reliable traffic measures for websites. There's a long way for this business to develop in the future I guess. I think these kind of sites will be back ends to video services in the future, but there's a way to go before that takes off for big sites let alone niche sites. For now we enjoy the journey (if there is enough time) while we learn.

 

[KBP]

tour rankings

I have a web site where I list my amateur players and their points by division. It may give some insite to up and coming players. Mike Howerton does a great job of posting events and updates. I love that site and even have it as a link on mine. Anyone who wants to see the Kings Bay Promotions, Inc. Amateur 9-Ball Tour can go to:
http://home.gate.net/~higgins3/
Just remember I am no web master and did this site myself. .
Kay Higgins
CEO

 

[Bluewolf]

pool site hits

I can see why sites like WPBA would get a lot of hits because people go there to check rankings, tournament results and player profiles. Just wonder how they measure hits also. Say, if I log into that site, but I have to poke around in 5 pages to find what I am looking for, does that count as one hit or 5, even though I was only there once?

As far as pool forums go, with the exception of colin's which also targets a different audience, I would say that AZ and CCB have the most traffic. JMO

Laura