I enjoyed Ryan Block’s response to Nick Denton’s assertion that Gizmodo’s traffic has passed Engadget’s.
The most interesting section was the one where Ryan addressed Denton’s claim that “Engadget had… in AOL, a corporate parent which funneled through new visitors.”
“Oh Nick, how I wish. According to our internal traffic systems, yesterday, our second biggest day for traffic ever, AOL referrers accounted for 0.2% – yes, less than one half percent – of our total page views. On our biggest day ever, the day the iPhone was announced, our AOL referrers accounted for a record 2.1%; in all of August, they represented less than 0.5% of all traffic. The vast majority, I believe, are just coming from AOL search (which uses Google, where we’re routinely higher ranked than our competition), too – not from promo.”
It’s bad corporate strategy for the past of online publishing (portals) to have its hands on the steering wheel while the present of online publishing (blogs) sits in the back seat repeatedly asking, “Are we there yet?”
A better strategy would be to find the future of online publishing.
Brian Alvey 