An Important Tool: Website Traffic Ratings

Internet users are very unforgiving. The rule is "You be good or I be gone". The better site developers understand this and work to resolve user issues systematically. They also understand that perfection is only a theoretical state. So when you don’t see a good rating on a site it can mean many things. Like surfing a wave, it's difficult to stay on top. The more successful sites provide fast, useful information and work across the entire spectrum of operating systems and versions. Everyone is in a constant state of becoming. There are no exceptions and the race never ends. High ratings are earned.

In any event traffic count is a good way for site managers to evaluate at least a portion of their internet business performance. Server speed, scale of connections, the quality of the software code, content and customer service are all elements in a successful web-based business. For those who list books to sell on line these websearch numbers offer a blunt appraisal of relative site strength. But as you now begin to understand, they are only part of the story.

Understandably Sotheby's and Christies are the most visited traditional auction houses on the net. They have both scale and money to develop sophisticated web-strategies. We cover almost 70 auction houses on AE but I'm listing only twenty here. There are many others, many in the previously stated condition of becoming, but compared to these companies and of course to the net's powerhouses they are far down the list of "most visited". Many are still just emerging because, for the world of old and rare books, the internet has been an opportunity that only now is becoming a necessity. In the world of books Amazon at number 3 among all websites is a true giant. eBay, in the eighth position, is huge as well.

Next we'll look at some sites that sell books on the net. Some are listing sites for third parties and some sell only under their own label. They often sell both new and used material and other categories of merchandise as well. These sites are emerging internet superstores and they will sell what their customers will buy. They are reverse engineered businesses built upon customer demand rather than upon management directive.

ABE books, 5th on this list, is the largest used book seller. Others that primarily sell used books are marked in yellow. Alibris is the most effective at marketing themselves on the net and Powell's Books of Portland, Oregon is also very good. The unmarked firms sell primarily, but not necessarily exclusively, new material. Here is how they rank:

Amazon	3
eBay	8
Barnes & Noble	290
Alibris	2,285
Alapage	3,670
ABE Books	3,747
Powell's	4,159
Chapters.Indigo.ca	5,413
Chapitre	19,293
Biblio	24,742
Elephantbooks	44,571
Usedbookcentral	60,012
TomFolio	72,813
Antiqbook	86,291
The BookCellar	137,150
Choosebooks	152,578
Biblion	213,482
Maremagnum	382,111
Bibliodirect	417,351
Bookavenue	430,408
Bibliopoly	434,206

One dealer recently said that if he puts his books on a few of the listing sites he is covering the market. He needs to be sure he is using at least one top rated site. It isn't just names, its numbers too.

These days the traditional book scout has morphed into a search engine. Here are four of them. Bibliofind searches only on Amazon while the other three search a diverse group of book listing sites. These services are the most efficient way to look at many sites simultaneously but they don’t always show every match on every site they search. At 217,769 Usedbooksearch.uk is a distant fourth.

Bibliofind.com (amazon)	22
Bookfinder	5,555
Add-all	11,679
Usedbooksearch.uk	217,769
Abooksearch	369,715

Then there are the book related organizations. The Library of Congress doesn't advertise but most people know about it. The Huntington Library outranks all but a few of the auction houses and would rank 13th among the book site search engines. The Americana Exchange is the leading subscription based research site in the book world.

Library of Congress	920
Huntington Library	68,133
ABAA	218,346
Americanaexchange.com	259,830
American Antiquarian Soc.	292,600
ILAB-LILA	487,852
Bibliographical Society of A.	n.r.
Grolier Club	n.r.
Rarebooks.fr	n.r.

ILAB and the ABAA are book seller organizations whose members list their books for sale on these sites. The American Antiquarian Society is a leading organization for those who love American history and the books that relate to it, the Bibliographical Society is an association for those who enjoy the details and the often arcane aspects of books and the Grolier Club is the leading book collector association in the United States. Rarebooks.fr is a subscription based site for those conducting research relating to old and rare books. Of course there are other book giants on the internet. They are called libraries and their numbers are generally very large. Their numbers, however, tend to be merged with the institutions of which they are a part.

We are very fortunate to have ranking tools to help site developers, book dealers and internet users understand the relative strength of book related sites. If, over time the numbers are improving, the site is invariably improving so looking at the numbers is a good way to understand how the field is progressing. Here is how you download the websearch tool bar to your computer.

Click on this link or use a Google search for www.websearch.com Then click on Download the WebSearch Toolbar or click on this link: http://www.websearch.com/toolbar/tb landing.aspx?id=50024&t=1&ut=1 . Click on DOWNLOAD NOW! Then click on the stand-alone installer. The download will take only a few seconds. Then follow the directions in the dialog box to OPEN and then follow the steps. Finally, remember this software only works on Microsoft operating systems.