RPM Information Network: GIS
Web Site Domain Ratings, September 1998

Site	Visits	Performance	Links In	Freshness	Pages
Lycos Maps	Top 100	Average	363,035	Excellent	No Data
Microsoft TerraServer	Top 500	No Data	No Data	No Data	No Data
Map Quest	Top 1,000	Slow	20,138	Excellent	No Data
ESRI	Top 5,000	Slow	5,062	Excellent	Over 1,000
Autodesk: Map Guide	Top 5,000	Slow	11,178	Excellent	Over 1,000
Intergraph	Top 5,000	Average	4,879	Excellent	Over 1,000
Map Blast (Vicinity Corp)	Top 5,000	Average	2,924	Excellent	435
US Census Bureau	Top 5,000	Slow	47,141	Excellent	Over 1,000
USGS	Top 5,000	Fast	23,466	Excellent	Over 1,000
DeLorme Cyber Maps	Top 10,000	Average	3,045	Good	No Data
Bentley	Top 50,000	Slow	2,875	Excellent	Over 1,000
MapInfo	Top 50,000	Average	1,204	Good	881
Sol Katz Metadata (BLM)	Top 50,000	Slow	2,578	Excellent	Over 1,000
AGI GIS Dictionary (University Of Edinburgh)	Top 50,000	Average	3,935	Excellent	Over 1,000
Roelof Oddens's Bookmarks (Utrecht University)	Top 50,000	Fast	447	Excellent	No Data
GDT	Top 100,000	Slow	86	Excellent	169
Etak	Top 100,000	Slow	686	Excellent	223
AI Geostats	Top 100,000	No Data	47	No Data	No Data
Xerox PARC Map Server	Top 100,000	Slow	479	Excellent	No Data
Applied Geographic Solutions	Moderate Traffic	No Data	15	No Data	No Data
Big Book	Moderate Traffic	Average	462	Excellent	No Data
BLR (before GDT acquired)	Moderate Traffic	Average	16	Excellent	185
Caliper	Moderate Traffic	Average	105	Excellent	48
Claritas	Moderate Traffic	Slow	102	Good	61
GIS World	Moderate Traffic	Slow	896	Excellent	Over 1,000
Great GIS Net Sites	Moderate Traffic	Slow	393	Very Good	69
Master Environmental Library (MEL)	Moderate Traffic	Average	115	Good	Over 1,000
National Decision Systems	Moderate Traffic	Average	8	Excellent	204
Penn State Map Room (DCW)	Moderate Traffic	Average	168	Excellent	143
Qualitative Marketing Software	Moderate Traffic	Average	25	Very Good	85
RPM Information Network	Moderate Traffic	Slow	98	Excellent	178
Scan US	Moderate Traffic	Average	177	Very Good	419

Above are the ratings of some of the major GIS and mapping related websites for September, 1998. Some of these sites, like ESRI, are map and GIS centered; others, like Lycos Maps, prominently serve maps or feature other GIS or mapping-related content. The statistics are derived using web, network and server diagnostic tools. Visits reflects how a site rates among all sites on the Web with reference to the number of unique visits. This is based on hit counts recorded from various caches on the Internet backbone. Performance refers to the average amount of time it takes to display a page, with "Fast" equating to transfer rates of 50Kbps or higher; "Average" at about the speed of a 28.8 or 33.6 dial-up modem, and "Slow" reflecting transfer speeds of a 14.4 dial-up modem or below. The speed ratings are compiled based on a periodic archival update of the Web. Links In reflects how many other sites are linking in to a domain, which reflects how valuable its resources are considered to be by peer and related sites, portals, etc. Freshness refers to how recently the site has been updated, determined by analyzing the dates of pages found during periodic web crawls, with the freshest 5% of all pages on a site evaluated to determine their average age. Pages refers to the number of pages, and is a reflection of content. Sites with a relatively small number of pages can be considered in general to be more marketing-oriented, while sites with many pages reflect a content orientation.

Also remember that in addition to the fact that some of these sites are dedicated or largely dedicated to GIS and others are not, that some sites place their mapping or GIS content on a seperate domain, and some do not. For example, Lycos leads the way only because it is such a prominent search engine and portal, and that while it appears that Autodesk has a separate domain for Map Guide, it actually references the main domain -- thus, most of the visits to Lycos or even Autodesk have nothing to do with maps or GIS. Conversely, Microsoft has a unique domain for its relatively new TerraServer, and the number of visits to this unique domain is quite impressive.

Finally, keep in mind that the designation "Moderate Traffic" is an "everybody else" designation for sites that are not among the Top 100,000 on the web in terms of unique visits.

These ratings will be updated monthly, so do come on back and see us. If you have a site you'd like us to rate, just let us know.

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