Well, wish no more. That tool exists, and has existed for quite some time now.  It's called Alexa (http://www.alexa.com,) and with over 10,000,000 users worldwide, it's now one of the most widely used tools for doing research on web site traffic.    Although you have access to all of Alexa's data by visiting Alexa.com, for immediate access to traffic reports it's better to install the Alexa toolbar in your web browser. Once installed, Alexa provides immediate ranking information on every web site you view.  It also incorporates a powerful web search function powered by Google.com, and it provides a list of other sites of similar theme to the one being viewed online.   So how does Alexa help you?  We're going to keep this story focused specifically on the gay & lesbian market, but the points made here can easily be translated into understanding any specific online market.   Alexa provides a ranking number for every web site you visit.  This ranking number is based on a web site's usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3-month period.  A site's ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and page views:

• Page views are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site.

  Web site rankings are exactly what the word says... a ranking.  The most popular site online, ranked #1 by Alexa, is Yahoo.com.  MSN.com is #2.   To get an idea of how this works for the gay market, we'll provide the ranking numbers for some of the most popular gay web sites online.

1)     Gay.com: 591

2)     PlanetOut.com: 7,213

3)     Advocate.com: 21,034

4)     GayWired.com: 35,619

  What this means is that Gay.com is the 591^st most visited site online, while Advocate.com is the 21,034^th most visited site online.  By itself, this number means very little.  But when combined with a full Alexa web site traffic report, it means a lot more!   By going to Alexa.com (or using their toolbar in your web browser), you can type in a web site URL and retrieve an Alexa summary of this site, along with a link to an Alexa Traffic Report.  Clicking on this report provides you with the following:  

1)     Daily Traffic Report chart


2)     Traffic Ranking over a 3-month average, along with a summary of the trend

3)     Reach Report, per million users:

4)     Page Views Report

To determine a web site's daily traffic, measured in visitors per day, the Reach Report is the most critical.  In this case, it says that the sample web site above receives 850.5 users for every million online users.  Since Alexa doesn't know exactly how many users are online, it can't measure how many visitors a site has.   Given that Alexa is primarily installed on US-based computers, an approximation to a web site's traffic patterns can be established.  It is currently estimated that there are 80,000,000 users online in the US .  By taking the "per million" number above, 850.5, and multiplying it by 80, an estimate of the web site's traffic above would be 68,040 users per day.  That's some excellent traffic!   Applying this to specific sites online, as of May 15, 2003 , we learn the following:

1)     Advocate.com: Reach = 62, approximate users per day = 4,960 per day
Reach over 3 months has gone up by 6%, which shows this site is growing in a positive direction.

Selecting a traffic report for Outsports.com shows a ranking of 111,884 and a reach of 14.  Multiplied by 80, this becomes 1,120 visitors per day, which is both respectable and typical for a niche site in the gay & lesbian online community.  Selecting GaySports.com shows a ranking of 207,937 and a reach of 4.  Multiplied by 80, this becomes 320 visitors per day.   Since travel is such an important segment of the gay & lesbian online community, the following is a summary of the top 5 sites in Travel.

In addition, Alexa randomly selects a smaller site within each category and displays them in the Reviewers Rave section, as follows:  

  ... Thus allowing you to discover sites you may not otherwise have noticed.   To sum it up, you can select a category and analyze both which sites are the top ranked sites in that category, and get a better understanding of each individual web site's traffic patterns.  This allows you to make a better informed decision when selecting which sites to advertise or partner with.

So what is the most popular category of gay sites online?  Well, that's easy: Personals and Adult.  Adult has always been a strong category in the gay (or straight) online market, with the trend moving away from retail sales of adult videos, to DVDs and pay per view streaming video.   The same is true for personals, which started in the old days with gay chat rooms on AOL and migrated to the Internet on Gay.com.  Sites with personals, ranging from PlanetOut.com and Gay.com to MyGaydar.com and M4M4Sex.com, have some of the strongest traffic trends in the online gay & lesbian community.   Next come Shopping and News.  Shopping is dominated by sites such as TLAVideo.com, 10Percent.com and BuyGay.com.  In news, sites such as Advocate.com and 365Gay.com take the lead and have strong traffic rankings and reach.   So depending on your own individual needs, including the types of sites you wish to advertise or partner with, and having the knowledge of which sites are strongest in all areas of the online gay & lesbian market, starting with Alexa.com is the best first step to getting the information you need.  It's quick, easy and incredibly effective at giving you the research you need accurately and promptly!

© 2003 Matthew Skallerud, All Rights Reserved