Alexa Global 100 Breakdown

I was surfing the Alexa Global 500 today, and decided to breakdown the english-language sites in the global 100, just for fun. I was hoping to compare the results against Compete, but it doesn't look like they have a top 100 listing feature yet. Here are some thoughts:

• Search is crowded - Starware.com is 96 - has anyone ever heard of them? 96 is a great Alexa rank, but what good is being anything other than 1, 2 or 3 in search?



• Google.com is ranked #3, most likely because it has a different tld strategy than Yahoo! or Microsoft (www.google.br vs. br.yahoo.com)



• While YouTube dominates video sharing, the photo sharing space is still very competitive, with 5 (english-based) services in the top 100.



• Only 6 sites are primarily corporate/e-commerce sites: Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, ebay, Amazon and Craigslist (wasn't sure what other category to put Craigslist in)



• The newer social networking sites (MySpace, Orkut, Hi5, Facebook) all rank ahead of the older ones (Friendster, Xanga)



• Whoever said that the Chinese are going to rule the world once again was right: 15 Chinese language sites in the Global 100

Alexa has its biases, but it has been a "good enough" ballpark estimate of traffic for sites down to a rank of 100,000th place. While no Internet professional would use Alexa rankings as an absolute measure, most would agree that they have been a Godsend to those who are either seeking trends or performing cursory due-diligence on web businesses.

Search Engines/Portals: (rank in brackets)
Yahoo! (1), MSN (2), Google (3), Windows Live (7), Go (38), AOL (51), Rediff (84), Starware (96)

Non dot.com Google sites in the top 100: 18

Non dot.com Yahoo sites in the top 100: 2

Video/Photosharing:
YouTube (4), Fotolog (29), Flickr (42), Imageshack (50), Photobucket (55),  ImageVenue (82)

Blogging/hosting:
Blogger (15), LiveJournal (66), Geocities (67)

File Transfers:
Megaupload (16), RapidShare.com (22), RapidShare.de (77) 

Social Networking:
MySpace (5), Orkut (8), Hi5 (19), Facebook (28), Friendster (32), Xanga (58), Adult Friendfinder (73)

Corporations:
Microsoft (13), Apple (77), Adobe (95)

e-commerce/listings:
ebay (14), Amazon (23), Craigslist (39)

News/Reference:
Wikipedia (11), BBC (31), IMDB (35), CNN (48), Digg (79), About (93)

Open Source Software Community:
SourceForge (97)

Chinese sites:
Baidu (6), qq (9), sina (12), sohu (17), 163 (18), Yahoo China (21), Taobao (26), Wretch (36),  Tom (44), discuss.com.hk (64), uwants (68),  Alibaba (80), vnet (81), Soso (83), pchome.com.tw (88)