Listing of top Philippine news sites

The government-owned Philippine News Agency listed yesterday the top mainstream Philippine news websites based on Netcraft ranking. The data is taken from browsing habits of users of the Netcraft toolbar. I don’t know how big and representative that user base is.

I also don’t know how PNA compiled the list, I tried looking for a listing of the top Philippine sites in Netcraft but couldn’t find one. There’s a listing of the most visited websites with site rank scores but this isn’t grouped by countries and there isn’t even a link to succeeding pages. You can also get the site ranking when you do a web server query in Netcraft. I don’t know if you can access the list if you have the Netcraft toolbar, which I don’t (I hate toolbars-except for the web developer toolbar for Firefox).
Here are parts of the PNA story:

“MANILA, Jan. 20 (PNA) – The government-owned Philippines News Agency website has landed in the 10 most popular news sites in the country, a strong sign that people want also the good news….

SunStar, a Cebu-based chain of provincial newspapers, has been listed by Netcraft as the most-visited Filipino websites, followed by the Daily Inquirer/GMA (inq7), and next by the newsBalita.

The top 10 are: SunStar, Daily Inquirer/GMA, newsBalita, Philippine Star, ABS-CBN, Manila Bulletin, Manila Times, Malaya, Philippine News Agency, and Journal Group.

Here’s PNA’s ranking of the sites:
1: Sun.Star 2,518
2: Daily Inquirer/GMA 3,320
3: newsBALITA 4,989
4: Philippine Star 5,580
5: ABS-CBN 10,029
6: Manila Bulletin 11,549
7: Manila Times 16,680
8: Malaya 25,746
9: Philippine News Agency 49,368
10: Journal Group 56,801
11: Daily Tribune 82,215
12: Manila Standard 83,102
13: Philippine Headline News 96,046
14: Abante 120,524
15: Abante Tonite 143,651
16: Newsbreak Online 216,768
17: Business World 267,385
18: Minda News 342,468
19: Cyberdyaro 398,530
20: Bulalat 738,857

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8 responses

  1. “12: Manila Standard 83,102”

    LOL

  2. Balita compliled this list from reports made by Netcraft it is accurate and we in turn passed this on to Philippine News Agency who decided to release it as a story.

    Netcraft rakings are more reliable than the ‘similar’ Alexa which is compiled from users of Internet Explorer with the Alexa toolbar. Netcraft uses a different criteria and lists some 5.5 million websites in its most visited tables.

    So the results were accurate at the time – for those interested Balita receives almost 2 million page views a month and has done so for the past 5 or 6 years. We are now in our 13th year of continuous operation.

    – Marites –

  3. Inq7.net gets around 41 Million pageviews a month.

  4. Marites, great to hear from you again. Rankings are great but I don’t put too much stock on those that get data from toolbars. In Alexa, for example, my site’s ranked in the 300,000 level, in Netcraft its rank is 297,859 and I find that rather hard to believe. After all, how many users bother to install toolbars?

  5. Max we also never bother with toobars that is why Alexa is a complete non-starter Windows and Internet Explorer users only.

    As I said Netcraft figures are not based on toolbar returns it is something to do with search engine results and some formula they keep secret to themselves. But whatever major source we use they are subject to error – big errors sometimes. Not like a newspaper prints x copies has y returned so z has to be the approximate circulation. TV, radio and Internet audiences can only be guesses. Balita calculates its page views from advertiser returns and not what our log says.

    I think 41 million page views for INQ7 yuga is a little over the top – the BBC which maintains it is the most read news site on the net does not maintain this figure a month 🙂

    Take care Max, regards to Anol.

    Marites

  6. Max

    I have heard from Alexa regarding Philippine rankings, they have told me that they are in the process of demoting many Philippine rankings in the top 50 as it is obvious they are cheating, as many as 80% they are saying of the sites listed in the top 50. They have not named names, which I guess is to be expected. As a rough indicator they have said if there is a variation of more than 50,000 between Alexa/Netcraft rankings on these top 50 sites then there could be something wrong with the figures accuracy.

    Alexa further say they do not purport their rankings to be an accurate figure, but a snapshot of what users using the toolbars’ habits are with surfing. I am afraid they still won’t give me a user base of the Alexa toolbar, no more will Netcraft give anymore than downloads, however, one has to question what percentage of Alexa/Netcraft downloads actually end up on a users browser.

    I am a shareholder of Amazon and asked my questions on that basis.

    Sure there is a need for an accurate source for rankings.

    Belated Easter blessings

    Marites

  7. I think that is stats is not correct. Many users use FireFox, many work under Linux e.t.c.

  8. Alexa doesn’t give a really good snapshot of a website’s overall ranking. True, it depends on how many site visitors have installed the Alexa toolbar. The prob is that it skews the stats that way. A scam site, studiotraffic.com (once ranked in the top 5o) still ranks 142,000+ although its pageviews are almost nil. My site has higher pageviews but since mine targets Pinoys (who bother not to install the Alexa) toolbar), it only ranks within the 200,000+ range.

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