Web Host Marketing Roundup: MediaTemple Gains Most in Popularity

So I spent the last hour scoping out a bunch of your competitors for you. I looked up how they're doing on Alexa, Compete.com, Quantcast.com and the Commercial Intention Detection Engine on Microsoft adCenter Labs. I put all the stats on a Google Spreadsheet, which I've published here.

What did I learn from this exercise? The bad news is, the competitive research tools we've got are *wildly* inconsistent. Alexa says The Planet is the 153rd highest traffic site, but Quantcast and Compete.com put it at #26406 and #31035, respectively. The commercial intention rating of Aplus.Net visitors was 0.03 when I compiled this list the other day; now it's up to 0.68.

Still, when you look at the stats in aggregate, some fuzzy patterns do emerge. For instance, the most popular web hosting sites (with highest average Alexa/Compete/Quantcast rankings) seem to be:

* 1449: GoDaddy
* 3171: iPowerWeb
* 3975: Register.com
* 6266: Aplus.Net
* 6675: BlueHost

I was surprised that 1&1 wasn't higher up on the list (they're #9, with an average ranking of 9574), given its super prominent print ads.

Between Alexa's and Compete.com's growth stats, MediaTemple appears to be gaining fastest in popularity. Its position advanced by 6847 (or 159% of its current #4295 ranking) on Alexa, and 84678 on Compete. Other big winners include BlueHost, HostGator and DiscountASP.NET.

On the downside, the EV1Servers site seems to be losing ground; has some of its traffic gone to The Planet? iPowerWeb, Hostway and Dotster have declining rankings as well.

Most interestingly of all, I did a side-by-side comparison (on the "traffic quality" tab here) of Quantcast's visitor stickness metric (percent of audience that are "regulars" or "addicts", versus "passersbys"), Compete.com's average stay estimate (number of minutes spent per visitor), and Microsoft adCenter Labs' commercial intention rating.

And the winners in terms of visitor quality are 1&1 - as well as the same three sites with decreasing traffic rankings (iPowerWeb, Hostway and Dotster). Looks likes their marketing teams have succeeded in attracting a smaller quantity of more highly targeted traffic.

DiscountASP, on the other hand, gains on both fronts, as do Intermedia.NET and GoDaddy.