I received an email notification from Homelidays announcing that Alexa now ranks Homelidays as the number one vacation rentals site worldwide, beating VRBO, who have long since held this title. The claim is based upon the "Daily Reach" figure that Alexa calculates.
Alexa recently changed their ranking system, expanding it to include sources other than just users of the Alexa toolbar. It's possible that this might explain the change in ranking, although it's not clear from the information provided.
According to Homelidays, they overtook VRBO sometime early in 2008. If true, this is quite an achievement, as Homelidays is a European site,with a lot fewer vacation rental listings than VRBO, which has a huge amount of US vacation rental listings. However, when I check the latest alexa traffic rankings, using the vacation rentals site reviews page of COHR, VRBO seems to rank higher than Homelidays. Which is correct?
Alexa rankings should be used with caution. They are a good overall indicator of the traffic on a particular vacation rentals site, but because they are only based on a small sample of web users, you should not take them as an exact indicator.
3 comments:
I can definatly agree with you. It seems like these sites to me do strange
things to attract their visitors.
Kevin from VIP Disney Homes
Our properties-- Venice and Panama are listed on both Vrbo and Homlidays. We had one email from someone through holidays and hundreds through Vrbo. Also Vrbo is much better organized.
Alain
I agree with what you say in principle, however lots of traffic aint necessarily a good thing. Have you heard of the 'longtail of the internet'? This theory defines what the internet is all about. If you jump in with the big boys and try to compete you will get hammered by their massive marketing budgets. The key is to target a niche and go for keywords that they aren't targeting. So you go for PPC terms that have smaller volume but are more defined and optimise pages in the same way. You get less traffic, but it's cheaper and more targeted to your niche. So VRBO (rubbish domain name as well!) can keep there mass, we'll stick to the better ROI form niche terms.
Regards
Andy Parr MBA
CEO
VIPvillas.com
VIP villas and beach villas in the best locations
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