Google’s Best Of The Web
Stuart gave me a heads up to this post on his blog, where he has found something interesting. He accidentally searched for “www” at Google, and found a listing of the top sites on the web. These rankings are, by all appearances, the “master list” of web PageRank. So, what are the top sites on the web, period, as determined by Google? Well, at number one, it’s Yahoo.
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1. Yahoo
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2. Microsoft
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3. AltaVista
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4. CNN
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5. Amazon
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6. Lycos
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7. Adobe
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8. Excite
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9. Google
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10. Mapquest
This is a very interesting list. This is Google’s absolute, in-order, listing of the top sites on the web. If you’re on this list, you’re important. I’ll be checking up every so often to see how the rankings have changed.
Observations:
- Some sites, like AltaVista, Excite, Winamp, and Northern Light are remnants of Web 1.0, and won’t last.
- Microsoft has 3 sites on the list (with MSN and Hotmail). Google has two (with Blogger). But the largest presence is from government organizations, with 10% of the list.
- Slashdot is the number one blog, at #40, followed by Search Engine Watch (#89) and Fresh Meat (96). And kudos to Search Engine Watch, which is there for the simple fact that it is a major authority which basically every news site in the Top 100 has linked to at some point.
Read on for the entire Top 100.
1. Yahoo
2. Microsoft
3. AltaVista
4. CNN
5. Amazon
6. Lycos
7. Adobe
8. Excite
9. Google
10. Mapquest
11. AllTheWeb
12. Hotbot
13. The New York Times
14. World Wide Web Consortium
15. Real.com
16. Mozilla
17. Dogpile
18. IMDB
19. Netscape
20. Hotmail
21. Winzip
22. World Health Organization
23. Apple
24. IBM
25. Apache
26. Macromedia
27. Hewlett Packard
28. PHP
29. eBay
30. Go.com
31. United Nations
32. Tucows Downloads
33. Washington Post
34. Weather Channel
35. mySQL
36. The World Bank
37. Encyclopedia Britannica
38. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
39. USA Today
40. Slashdot
41. SUN Microsystems
42. World Trade Organization
43. MSN
44. Cisco
45. GNU
46. Winamp
47. American Cancer Society
48. Barnes & Noble
49. Northern Light
50. Linux
51. American Red Cross
52. PayPal
53. Symantec
54. Intel
55. Opera
56. AskJeeves
57. Red Hat
58. HowStuffWorks
59. AOL
60. American Heart Association
61. National Geographic
62. Monster.com
63. College Board
64. About.com
65. Reuters
66. Internet Public Library
67. Download.com
68. LookSmart
69. Wall Street Journal
70. UNICEF
71. OpenOffice.org
72. UNESCO
73. Webcrawler
74. PBS
75. CareerBuilder
76. FinAid (financial aid guide)
77. Merriam-Webster
78. Wired News
79. Debian
80. Centers For Disease Control
81. White House
82. Amnesty International
83. Green Peace
84. Electronic Frontier Foundation
85. Dictionary.com
86. Shareware.com
87. Oracle
88. The Economist
89. Search Engine Watch
90. International Monetary Fund
91. Financial Times
92. ICQ
93. McAfee
94. Refdesk
95. The Internet Archive
96. Freshmeat.net
97. FindLaw.com
98. The Los Angeles Times
99. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
100. Blogger.com
You may want to actually check the PageRank of some of those sites before you make any claims about their sorting order.
Comment by Mihai | January 8, 2005
As Google has made eminently clear, PageRank is only one of many factors. This search reveals who wins when all of those factors are considered, without any keyword weighting. I doubt its going to get better than this.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | January 8, 2005
This isnt anything new, similar results can be had by typing in “the” or “http” - people have been doing it for years to get an idea of PR 10’s and 9’s - it was interesting back when PR mattered
Comment by Nick W | January 9, 2005
“This is Google’s absolute, in-order, listing of the top sites on the web. If you’re on this list, you’re important.”
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You’re right who’s on this list is important, but it’s not the “absolute” order list. E.g. it would exclude sites which for whatever reason don’t have “www” in their URL — like Slashdot.org.
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Why? Because the list is ranked the way it is because a large number of people use “www.company.com” as link text, so the more of those, the more known that company is. “http” might be a better way to compile this list.
Comment by Philipp Lenssen | January 9, 2005
blah.. blah.. blah.. post by Nathan
Comment by z | January 9, 2005
Surely the BBC would be in an accurate top 100 list, but it’s url is news.bbc.co.uk
Comment by holojames | January 9, 2005
Hmmm I think the explanation to this is hidden here somewhere:
http://www.google.com/technology/
Nobody searches “google”. People type it on the browser’s URL field!
Comment by lorimer | January 9, 2005
Phillip, Slashdot is on the list.
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Lorimer, its not a list of top searches, but top links. What people search for matters not, what websites link to does.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | January 10, 2005
Holojames: Good point! I struggled to think of even a single site where the top level domain is less important than than a subdomain. Good call. Any others?
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Still, I don’t think BBC makes the cut. In every search I made while it ranks high as a news site, it doesn’t rank any higher than any site that did make the list.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | January 10, 2005
I thought of this years ago, and when I vetted it past my friend she said “Not all websites use www, like slashdot and sourceforge.” Even if you use www1, www2, etc. you’d b excluded from the list.
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