[Disclaimer: I'm feeling a bit cheeky today - comments are not meant to offend, kthxbai]
The third edition of our survey includes two new websites to replace ZebraBot and Discover-StMaarten, namely BestStMaarten and MapSXM. To complicate matters even more, Ken @ Discover has just reopened his site to the public, and our friends at the St. Maarten Tourist Bureau are now making a renewed effort with their "EngAAging New Web 2.0 Site" - oh well... Welcome back Ken!
In other news, Jeff is planning the relaunch of his EverythingUnderTheSunAndMore megasite - possibly committing seppuku in the process by switching to a new, and even longer domain name. Thank goodness for 301 redirects :) VisitStMaarten has recently been hit by Google's -900 penalty, it's unfortunate that they could not pass muster as the site probably underwent a manual review. Too many spammy links... Dang!
Conclusion: our next survey will once again include Discover-StMaarten, taking the place of VacationStMaarten. The jury is still out on SHTA's consumer site...
Still with me? OK, great! Cause here are the October results:
Just for laughs, you could compare the traffic that DineSXM gets via a single topic - restaurant information - with some of the "all-encompassing" resources... Or, you could go back to the results from our first and second benchmark surveys and notice that we've nicely moved up a few spots, becoming one of the top-10 St. Maarten / St. Martin websites.
Letting the traffic numbers from WebsiteOutlook speak for themselves, except for the inclusion of our own historical estimates for MapSXM and BestStMaarten, we see that most St. Maarten websites were able to rebound from a rather horrific Summer.
Comparing Spring and Fall figures, the larger websites St-Maarten.com and StMaarten.com both lost a bit of traffic. But that shouldn't be impossible to fix... Jan isn't known for twiddling his thumbs, and neither are the Mayers. StMaarten.org, a mid-size player, took a bit of a hit as well - but that could be due to Sam's usual hiatus during the Summer months. As soon as he kicks the newsletter back into gear we'll probably see him soaring again. At SXM-Info, Erich too needs to get off his lazy butt :) StMaarten-Info is still suffering from their design change earlier this year - c'mon Terrence, you can do it!
The newcomers, DineSXM and MapSXM, are the only winners! I have a lot of respect for Birgit, she seems to be very clearheaded and purpose driven... Not sure how far "free" will get them or if it will last, but they're definitely this year's success story.
2010 will bring even more fun! Happy New Year...
Norbert
Comparing Spring and Fall figures, the larger websites St-Maarten.com and StMaarten.com both lost a bit of traffic. But that shouldn't be impossible to fix... Jan isn't known for twiddling his thumbs, and neither are the Mayers. StMaarten.org, a mid-size player, took a bit of a hit as well - but that could be due to Sam's usual hiatus during the Summer months. As soon as he kicks the newsletter back into gear we'll probably see him soaring again. At SXM-Info, Erich too needs to get off his lazy butt :) StMaarten-Info is still suffering from their design change earlier this year - c'mon Terrence, you can do it!
The newcomers, DineSXM and MapSXM, are the only winners! I have a lot of respect for Birgit, she seems to be very clearheaded and purpose driven... Not sure how far "free" will get them or if it will last, but they're definitely this year's success story.
2010 will bring even more fun! Happy New Year...
Norbert
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