Another source of statistical goodness: Hitwise has opened a collection of ‘data centers’, giving a free teaser of the sort of information they collect. The UK one is here (and I’m not even going to gripe about the spelling of ‘center’ – oops); the US one is here. Granted, there isn’t much here in terms of volume, and you know a lot of it already anyway – but it’s worth bookmarking nonetheless. It’s nice to have one-click access to the most popular search terms for various industry sectors, for example.
Of course, it’s still w-a-y short of the intelligence on offer – free of charge – from Yahoo’s Overture ad network. This page will tell you the exact number of search queries across their network for a given keyword, and queries containing that keyword. Sure, it’s only Yahoo, so it’s based on less than 10% of all searches… but it’s surely enough to be considered representative. I still think this is the web’s best kept secret.
Response
[…] Simon Dickson reports that Hitwise has released a new source of statistical information called ‘Data Center‘, and one of the bits of information it provides is the top websites. I thought it would be interesting to look at the sites we visit the most, and see just how important a good site design is in attracting and keeping visitors. Below is the chart, including a rough mark out of five for my impression of the design, based on usability primarily, but also aesthetics. (I would have given Myspace less, had I decided to give half marks!) […]