The service of Alexa.com frequently is used to get an indication of which sites are most popular in different countries. Here are two top 20 lists for Norway, registered three years apart. Check the differences.
My colleague Espen Grimmert, digital marketing director and SEO expert at the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, checked the Alexa list for Norway three years ago when he gave a presentation for managers about the latest web trends in our country. His point at the time was to make the newspaper managers aware of how they faced online competition from a number of international brands. In Aftenposten he would show how the relatively unknown piczo.no – a social media site for children – seemed to attract more traffic than our own news site.
This weekend he copied the list again, exactly three years after the first one. And although Alexa for sure doesn’t give exact data for a small market like Norway, there are some interesting changes to be noted:
- Social media sites are rising. Facebook was not even on the list three years ago and is now the second most visited site in Norway. Other social media sites on the rise include Youtube, Wikipedia and blogging platforms like Google’s blogger.com and the local blogg.no. Also note number 10, Nettby, a social network run by the VG news site. Nettby is extremely popular among teenagers in Norway. Twitter, however, is not on the list. But it should be there soon: The microblog site is now number 21!
- Newspaper sites are still strong, but falling slightly. These include vg.no, dagbladet.no and aftenposten.no. Another, the online newspaper Nettavisen.no, has dropped out of the list. Still, there is hardly any country in the world where local newspaper sites are used as much as in Norway.
- Portal and catalogue sites are also falling. These include Startsiden.no, sol.no and gulesider.no. Also Norway’s version of Craigslist, the highly successful Finn.no, has dropped a few places.
- Google remains on the top as the most used web site in Norway.
- All in all, despite competition from international players, locally owned sites remain very strong in this market.
As I already have pointed out, Alexa data should be taken as a tough estimate rather than an exact list. The official measurements from TNS would be much more accurate for the local sites. But I still think these three-year changes may reflect some trends that are noteworthy.
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The danger of this digital media approach is the potential sacrifice of journalistic and editorial integrity to increase profitability in a zero to sixty manner.
Elishia Windfohr