Fun Stats For My Website, From Alexa Web Search)
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
My website, Biblical Evidence for Catholicism, continues to be ranked in the top three "most popular" and "most visited" for the category of "Catholicism Apologetics" on Alexa Web Search. Ahead of mine at the moment are (as usual) Catholic Answers and Envoy Magazine. I'm quite proud of this (if I do say so) because of the great prestige and influence of those websites and apostolates, and how much they are held in esteem (including by myself also), and the fact that both websites have organizations with many people on staff and a budget behind them (whereas I produced everything on mine by myself. I have no staff or Internet "techs").
What I found particularly interesting was the number of links to the top sites (the number of other sites that link to these). The one with the most wasn't mine (as I thought might be the case), or even one of the other two in the top three, but rather, the fourth most-visited: Jimmy Akin's Nazareth Resource Library, with a whopping 3,268 links (!!!). Good for you, Jimmy! It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Mine followed, with 2,035 links, followed by Catholic Answers, with 1,621. The key seems to be a longterm presence on the Internet. Jimmy's site (begun in September 1995) was there when I began mine (March 1997), as was Catholic Answers (April 1996). But Envoy is a newer site, which may account for its having "only" 506 links at present.
Another fascinating statistic provided by Alexa is "speed." Here is the comparison. I win in this category:
1) Biblical Evidence for Catholicism: "very fast" 0.6 seconds to load; faster than 89% of other sites.
2) Nazareth Resource Library: "fast" 1.2 seconds; faster than 69%.
3) Catholic Answers: "average" 1.6 seconds; faster than 53%.
4) Envoy Magazine: "average" 1.7 seconds; faster than 51%.
No doubt my older technology, "retro look" and far less graphics add to my speed. That's okay with me (and I hope, also for my readers). I have always been more about content than appearance (and about quick navigability), but I don't think my site is "unattractive."
Another fascinating tidbit is that when one does a search of "Christianity Apologetics", my site does not even appear in the top 100, as if Protestants dominate "apologetics" (or as if "Catholic apologetics" is somehow not to be classified as "Christian apologetics"). This is clearly a category mistake, since I dare say I probably have more general apologetics (not distinctively Catholic) writings on my website than probably 70-80% of those 100 apologetics websites.
If one narrows down the search to specifically Protestant pages on my website, the result is much different. For example, when I type "C.S. Lewis" into the "search" function for Alexa (under "Apologetics"), my Lewis Page comes in at #6 (really #5, since one is listed twice).
And on a somewhat humorous note: when I type in "Anti-Catholicism" in the same category, my old page comes in at #5, and my new Anti-Catholicism page follows it at #6.
But anyway, I'm happy that my site shows up as high in its category as it does.
