Slow News.com Year

It’s definitely true for me that I’m gravitating to more focused blogs for my info.

But I dunno, are you reading too much into those stats to call it a trend? The News.com graph shows a slip from a peak of being ranked at #42 among all websites down to being #72. The gizmodo and wifinetnews sites by contrast show somewhat inconsistent traffic with gizmodo barely cracking #9,000 and wifinews generally dropping from a peak rating around #40,000.

Great to see Gizmodo getting well deserved increases in traffic… but it may be a stretch to say that its gains are related to a 30-seat slip for News.com.

The Alexa comparison I like best and find most instructive is the Wikipedia against the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=379&h=216&r=1y&u=eb.com/&u=wikipedia.org

My, how the mighty have fallen!

I’m glad to see Wi-Fi Networking News has crept up to 40,000 overall. We operate on a very very small budget with about a 20%-time writer and myself. So I’m pretty happy to be ranked that high!

glenn – i am glad to see you are doing well. totally deserved. josh you bring up great points and i think that is the future i think

Be careful not to misinterpret those charts… It isn’t a chart of pageviews or traffic, but News.com’s overall popularity ranking compared to the universe of other websites. News.com’s traffic may be skyrocketing, but other newer websites may be creeping into the top 100. These sites might not compete with News.com at all, such as new search engines or web services.

andy this is more indicative of the trend than anything else. drill down the data and you see even readership per million is slipping and so are the page views. anyway i think we migh be entering an era of more “humane web.”

Traffic to News.com has been quite steady during this period, actually.

The trendline reflects the move of Download.com and some other CNET Networks sites off of com.com. That network domain was never just News.com. Some of the CNET Networks sites have moved back to their own domain. Download.com is the largest, and hence has the most effect on Alexa’s judging of the domain — but it’s not reflective of a single site.

I am missing something here. Look at the traffic of Download.com – it is in its own world. It was no even part of the discussion. I am saying is that blogs – in fact the focused blogs are taking away the unique niche News.com had as the tech news source. Maybe because John you work at News.com you have a better insight!

Om, look again at the URL you cited originally. Don’t just look at the graph, look at the URLs which make up com.com.

I’m saying that Download.com and TechRepublic and a few other sites are part of what you represented as News.com. Alexa correctly redirected news.com to news.com.com, but its traffic graphic shows all traffic to the main domain (com.com), not just a single site. Download.com.com is (by far) the largest proportion of that domain’s traffic.

Download moved their front door (big in of itself) back to Download.com, so the traffic for Download.com is only for the site’s front door. The interior pages are still on com.com.

com.com != only CNET News.com

That’s the main point.