100 Undiscovered Sites: On the way to discovery?
Written by Andy Kazeniac (contact - e-mail) -- October 2nd, 2007 | Recommend ThisBeing an “undiscovered site” isn’t ideal, but it often isn’t a bad thing (assuming the discovery phase isn’t too far off in the distance). There is even an allure to the undiscovered for many web enthusiasts looking to find the next big thing.
PC Magazine recently released their list of Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites, a list with admittedly varying levels of popularity already, and I was curious to see if any of these were reaching “discovery.”
- The group had a combined total of over 26 million unique visitors in August, roughly the same as Facebook.
- Five sites had over 1 million unique visitors in August; music discovery site imeem.com, job search aggregator indeed.com, IM-from-anywhere site meebo.com, news site topix.net, and real estate site trulia.com.
- Just under 28 billion minutes were spent on these sites in August.
One million sessions per month may not officially classify a site as discovered, but it’s certainly a good start. Four sites were able to break the one million sessions per month mark after starting out the year with under a million sessions in January.
These four sites each made a significant jump, but they were not the only ones; average sessions per site for the list as a whole has more than doubled since January, raising from 360k to over 690k.
Highlights
- About 180k people per month are unhappy enough with their new program to look for the old version at oldversion.com. I wonder how many of those people were using Microsoft Excel, trying to add up to 65,353.
- PC Mag’s description of icanhascheezburger.com includes the comment, “Cats are comical. You either get that or you don’t.” Clearly, I don’t get that, but more than 250k people per month do.
- I have already used several of these sites outside of work, including the online bookshelf of sorts goodreads.com, which is receiving six times the traffic it got in May.
While most of these sites may never get everyday visits from the masses, a few of them are certainly climbing the ranks. But as we saw yesterday, just being discovered and making your way to the top doesn’t mean that you’ll stay there.
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October 2nd, 2007 at 6:28 pm
The undiscovered sites are always the ones most interesting. The Top 100 sites are there because they’ve pasteurized and homogenized everything they could get their hands on to the extent that if you access just a few of them you get nearly all the value.
To find the New World, you have to sail off the edge of the known world into uncharted sites:
http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/the-internet-first-breeds-diversity-then-conformity-punctuated-equilibrium/
I think there’s huge opportunity in helping people to discover what lies off the edge of the radar scope. Perhaps Compete.com is positioned well to shine a light in those dark corners so they can be explored.
Cheers,
BW
October 3rd, 2007 at 2:54 pm
As the guy behind one of the “undiscovered” sites (http://www.websitegrader.com), I can say that the PC Mag article did indeed make it much more visible.
WebsiteGrader, (a free website analysis tool) hit the 100,000 websites graded milestone recently in part because of the PC Magazine mention.
October 9th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Andy,
Do a search for “lolcats” and you’ll understand.
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:08 pm
I love seeing articles like this. The most “popular” are seldom the most interesting or the most useful… they’re like WalMart. Mass marketed with wide reaching appeal and a definite hook, but not particularly enjoyable (personally speaking). The new up and comers offering unique, compelling content always catch my attention.
October 27th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Maybe you’ve miss looked it
March 21st, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Trulia has really come on the map fast. Their SEO seems to be great and always seem to be popping up at the top of many real estate searches. I guess a PageRank of 7 doesnt hurt.