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Hi Max and All,

I wanted to clarify how the Hitwise Top 10 Awards work...

1. Each quarter Hitwise recognises the top 10 websites across the 150
industry categories that we monitor with a top 10 award. We notify the
winners of these awards via email each quarter and provide them with a Top
10 logo should they want to display this award on their site. Winners of the
Top 10 awards do not have to be a client of the Hitwise service - they
simply need to register with us so we know who to send the award to.

2. Hitwise monitors and reports on all of the most popularly accessed sites
that New Zealanders are visiting regardless of whether they are a Hitwise
client or have registered for the Top 10 Award. By monitoring all sites
visited by users we are the only ratings company in the market that are able
to provide 'complete' Top 10 lists that look at all sites being visited -
not just client sites.

3. The Top 10 Award is simply an indication that your site was a Top 10 site
within a particular category for the quarter - the awards are not
accompanied by Hitwise clickstream, search term, demographic or detailed
rankings data. They are simply an indication that you were a Top 10 site.

We originally started the Top 10 awards in an effort to recognise those
sites that were the leaders within each industry.

The Hitwise competitive intelligence service in New Zealand has a variety of
access levels with prices ranging between NZ$3,000 and NZ$9,300, depending
on the number of categories and features that a client wishes to access.

Should you have any further questions on this please do not hesitate to
contact me directly.

Kind Regards

HARLEY GILES
International Business Development

Hitwise Pty Ltd
Level 7
580 St. Kilda Road
Melbourne, Victoria 3004
AUSTRALIA

Phone: +61 3 8530 2400
Mobile: +61 413 936 436

On Wed, 06 Aug 2003 06:26:13 GMT, "Harley Giles"
<> wrote:

>Hi Max and All,
>
>I wanted to clarify how the Hitwise Top 10 Awards work...
>
>1. Each quarter Hitwise recognises the top 10 websites across the 150
>industry categories that we monitor with a top 10 award.

So that's 1,500 awards for NZ websites.

Given that there are probably only a couple of hundred or so NZ
websites that attract anything more than a few thousand visitors a
month, aren't some of those awards just a little silly?

While it might make good marketing sense for HitWise to try and get
their logo plastered over up to 1,500 websites, doesn't the fact that
almost every site generating any traffic at all must qualify tend to
devalue the value of such an award?

I seem to regularly score second in my category (whatever that is) but
have a policy of not displaying ego-stickers on my sites because,
without any proper context, they mean absolutely nothing.

Perhaps you ought to send award winners a little more information
along with their ranking. For example -- how about telling them who
was immediately ahead of them and immediately behind them in the
rankings.

--
you can contact me via http://aardvark.co.nz/contact/