Tuesday, November 16, 2010

A new look at the metrics

Six months on Alexa is dropping all over the place while apartments are growing steadily:

Roman Reference: Alexa is down a further 11% to 83,233 while apartments (now 507) grew a handsome 10% (20% annualized.
Paris Reference: Alexa instead is improving handsomely 13% up to 150,000, on apartments the results are even more flattering. With 158 apartments the growth rate is 85% (170% annualized)!
Copenhagen Reference: is down 14% to 630,000. Apartments growth, with 13 now, is ok on a percentage basis, over 40%.
Cities Reference: is also going 10% downwards to 684,000.

The other cities don't have noteworthy differences

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

New Logos!


New Logo for cities reference and it's city sites are ready!

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Cities Reference teams up with Blizzard Marketing

We're eager to announce that we just partnered with Blizzard Marketing in Colorado, the aim is boosting our online standing and reputation.

In the past few months growth has been lagging behind. There has been a general slow down in traffic (see details below) and overall apartments grew by just (5%). We need a boost.

Roman Reference alexa ranking slowed down from 66,000 to present 77,000 (down 16%) and compete from 360,000 to 535,00 (down 48%!). Also in terms of apartments growth raise has been slow from 455 to actual 461 (annualized growth 2.9%).
Paris Reference lost positions from 137,00 to 172,000 on Alexa (down 25%) and from 649,000 to 753,000 on compete (down 14%). Apartments grew into 86 (annualized growth 24%).
Copenhagen Reference went from 358,000 to 553,00 (down 35%) and from 878,000 to 847,000 (so it actually grew on Compete.com). Stable on apartments.
Cities Reference from 518,000 to 624,000 (down 20%) and 742,000 to 988,000 (down 33%).
New York Reference from 793,000 to 1,584,000 (down 99%!), while it grew 10% on compete from 936,000 to 847,000! Apartment growth has been astounding from 9 to 21 (270% annualized growth).
London Reference from 1,053,000 to 1,755,000 and from 742,000 to 1,073,000. Stable on apartments.
Berlin Reference from 1,090,000 to 1,494,000 on alexa, while it grew on compete from 1,197,000 to 1,070,000. Stable on apartments.
Barcelona Reference from 1,186,000 to 2,575,000 while it grew on Compete from 935,000 to 846,000. Stable on apartments.
Miami Reference from 1,223,000 to 3,041,000 and 927,000 to 1,074,000. Stable on apartments.
Madrid Reference from 2,235,000 to 2,654,000 and now ranked on compete at 1,073,000.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Saturday, February 6, 2010

technorati claim code TFDRNF75JNYP

Technorati claim code

TFDRNF75JNYP

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Nice new features for CitiesReference's Owners

Starting this week owners are enabled to change/update your apartments' weekly prices and upload new apartment's pictures directly from your back office access. As usual you are very welcome to keep your calendar updated and write a personalized unedited blurb on your own apartment and its whereabouts. Questions are welcome, contact us or comment here.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

More metrics for the cities reference network

Alexa rankings are not nearly as precise as Google Analytics. Although I'm not quite ready to make public the analytics results I can say that broadly speaking the differences you see on the alexa rankings underestimate romanreference by a measure of half (romanreference has actually 450% more visitors than parisreference (not just 200%) and 1,300% more than copehagenreference (not just 540%)).
Broad differences do reflect analytics measures from there on though, with paris going some 250% faster than cph and copenhagen going ca 150% faster than citiesreference. Major difference otherwise is that Berlin and Barcelona are actually 100% bigger than the other younger websites.

Looking at the analytics each website visitor's size, broadly reflects its age online with the only exception that to get really close to the precise measure you should double the value. For example RomanReference is 250% older than ParisReference, but ca 500% more valuable in terms of visitors and 1,000% in terms of revenue, ParisReference is 150% older than CopenhagenReference but 290% more valuable etc.
Age does matter for websites' visitors and market value. For a reason.

Let's look at another public measure, listings
Roman Reference as of January 2010 has 455 apartments
Paris Reference 77 apartments
London Reference 28 apartments
Barcelona Reference 19 apartments
Berlin Reference 10 apartments
Copenhagen Reference 9 apartments
Madrid Reference 9 apartments
Miami Reference 8 apartments
New York Reference 8 apartments

Friday, January 29, 2010

Welcome to Cities Reference

Welcome to CitiesReference.com blog. In the past years we've kept a blogonly for Rome and one for Paris, with Rome, romanreference.com being our best and foremost website, picking up on all our best posts.
The idea is to slowly move all generalist and vacation market related posts here and leave strictly those related to Rome in romanreference blog, Paris in parisreference.com blog, etc.
Cities Reference blog should sort of encompass all the other cities and we though a good way to start with this would be to take a picture at the Alexa and Compete rankings of all our network's websites from most to least relevant/visited:

Roman Reference clearly comes first with alexa ranking of 66,000 and a 360,000 on compete
Paris Reference is second with 137,00 on Alexa and 649,000 on compete
Copenhagen Reference is third with 358,000 and 878,000
Cities Reference with 518,000 and 742,000
New York Reference with 793,000 and 936,000
London Reference with 1,053,000 and 742,000
Berlin Reference with 1,090,000 and 1,197,000
Barcelona Reference with 1,186,000 and 935,000
Miami Reference with 1,223,000 and 927,000
Madrid Reference with 2,235,000 and not yet ranked on compete

In other words, at the beginning of 2010 our Rome vacation rental website is still leading uncomparably faster than the other. We'll take other measures in the next posts and see how this is going to change now that we'll start implementing a more global strategy.