The euphoniously named Media Metrix The PC Meter Company has released its web site ratings, titled Top 25 At Home and At Work. Predictably, the company found Yahoo and AOL held strong positions. However it also reported a dramatic rise in hits on Geocities.com. How significant is such a rise? Considering the differences between Media Matrix’s top ten and those of its rivals Hot100.com and RelevantKnowledge Inc, it’s probably not very significant at all. To be fair, the companies agree on the relative positions of most of the usual suspects. Yahoo, Netscape, Microsoft, Excite and Infoseek appear in the same order in all three lists. Lycos, Altavista and MSN each appear on only two, but they don’t contradict any other respective rankings. Other differences, though, mean one or other of the sites is getting it wrong. Media Metrix lists AOL ahead of Yahoo, with GeoCities in third place, ahead of Netscape, Microsoft and Excite. According to Hot100, AOL and GeoCities don’t make the top ten at all. But Relevant Knowledge says AOL gets fewer hits than Yahoo, and Geocities fewer than Netscape, Microsoft and Excite. It’s hard to reconcile that with the Media Metrix findings. For its part, Hot 100 lists four sites that appear on neither of the others: Mirabilis, Pathfinder, USA Today and Disney. What gives? Well, when it comes to web top tens, caveat emptor. It’s an artificial market in any case, since Netscape and Microsoft score donkey votes by setting their sites as browser defaults. Here’s a challenge to the would-be top ten top ten sites: eliminate vendors and justify your differences from other metrics. That might make a top ten worth reading.
