SECAUCUS, N.J. -- TravelWeekly.com is making its mark in
cyberspace, topping other trade Web sites in usage and winning a
recent Best of the Web award.
The online affiliate of Travel Weekly ranked first among travel
trade Web sites in traffic in the fourth quarter, according to
Alexa, a unit of Amazon.com that crawls the Web and calculates
Internet usage.
Alexa calculated that TravelWeekly.com was first in traffic
among its peers by combining the Web site's reach rank (the number
of unique users) and page-view rank (the quantity of unique pages
viewed per user each day) in October, November and December.
In so doing, TravelWeekly.com outpaced a variety of Web sites
operated by both associations and publications (see chart).
Also, Min (Media Industry Newsletter) Online, a unit of PBI
Media, recently designated TravelWeekly.com as its B2B Winner in
the Editorial Excellence category of its 2002 Best of the Web
Awards.
"It's great to receive an award from peers in publishing, but
the Alexa numbers are especially meaningful -- they let us know
we're meeting a need of the industry," said Arnie Weissmann,
TravelWeekly.com's editor in chief.
"We strive to be the one-stop travel industry Web site, the one
that you'd turn to if you have time to view only one," Weissmann
added. "And it's great to get some independent numbers that
indicate we're on the right track."
Jonathan Leblang, vice president of Web services for Alexa, said
the company calculates reach and page views to get the most
reliable picture of a Web site's popularity.
In that way, he added, rankings aren't skewed toward a chat
site, for instance, that may have a few users who keep reloading
pages.
"Because we feel that consistent traffic is a better indication
of a site's value, we've chosen to use the three-month traffic rank
to represent the site's overall popularity," the company said.
Limits to Alexa's research should be noted.
Alexa tracks Web usage by millions of Microsoft Internet
Explorer users who download its free Alexa Toolbar.
Alexa collects little data from Web surfers who use Netscape and
America OnLine browsers.