Rain City Guide, Seattle Real Estate Professionals, and Seattle Bubble all get mentions in Aubrey Cohen’s latest piece for the P-I: Debate over real estate goes online
Real estate agent John “Mack” McCoy wasn’t expecting an argument when he started blogging about housing and commenting on other posts and news stories online.
“I started out thinking that people might be interested in what a real estate professional has to say about buying and selling homes,” he said.
“Now, it seems that the audience is (composed) of people who want to tell real estate professionals what they know about buying and selling homes.”
…
“I’m not speaking from the perspective of someone who has something to sell, but rather just a guy that is taking in a ton of information and trying to process it all to make it easier for other people to get beyond the sales pitches and find out what’s really going on,” [Seattle Bubble author Tim] Ellis said.
The article is worth a read, although there’s not really any new information in there for anyone that has been following any of those three sites. I guess the purpose of the article is more to point out the online discussion to folks that tend to just read the newspapers.
Interloper » Aug 3, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Nice article. It gives representative arguments from both sides of the debate, and most importantly, lets readers know this debate is happening online. The typical reader, I’d bet, doesn’t even know this is happening, and as you imply those folks could benefit from going deeper than Seattle media articles are going on the subject.
S-Crow » Aug 4, 2008 at 12:01 am
I find it much more interesting reading and discussing real estate issues with people who are existing owners, previous owners and owners-to-be. Particularly, a blog run by a non real estate industry fellow.
I’ve met with Tim Ellis on several occasions and it’s my opinion that this blog is probably the most consumer driven blog in our region. And, the analysis by Tim Ellis, warts and all, is the most sincere and “lesser biased” at finding out where we’ve been and where we may end up going forward.
While real estate “insider” issues are important, much of which is discussed at Rain City Guide and elsewhere, THE primary top-of-the-mind consumer issue is not NWMLS Form changes, additions or recent case law, but whether to buy or be patient and idle during a market correction! Second, is financing and what rates/programs are doing. In that order.
Real estate professionals constantly discuss that buying a home is THE #1 most expensive and important purchasing decisions most people will go through, so it is of paramount importance whether or not to buy in the first place. Especially taking in consideration that real estate IS an asset class that is typically a part of an individuals overall long-term horizon wealth building objective.
People in the business may be suspicious (how dare a young fellow without a real estate license, nor even a homeowner! do more analysis than many in the business) or critique Tim Ellis and his motivations for the blog, but the one thing that really stands out about “The Tim” in my mind is that he is genuine guy who (rightly so) probably thinks that many other first time buyers are asking the same or similar questions and analysis of the real estate market that he is. For that, many should be thankful.
Joel » Aug 4, 2008 at 12:32 am
More like:
victorchai » Aug 4, 2008 at 12:32 am
well said S-Crow,we said.
Scotsman » Aug 4, 2008 at 1:16 am
The intersection of this particular market correction and the advent of blogs has put most real estate agents in an unfamiliar position. They no longer control access to the information that buyers and sellers need to make informed decisions. And with that loss of control and power has come a marked decrease in their value as part of the transaction. Some, like Ardell, are adjusting and moving on to better fit into the new reality. Others, like Mack, are fighting denial, looking for scapegoats and options that don’t exist.
Their protestations not withstanding, the buggy-whip manufacturers are going out of business. Some see it, some don’t . But it’s fascinating to watch the process unfold. Thanks again Tim for all your efforts.
Ella » Aug 4, 2008 at 7:10 am
Bloggers are doing the industry a service by letting them know what people are saying at the kitchen table. Without us they would be in the dark and not understand what is really going on.
Do they think we make up the affordability index, ARM’s, Negative AM’s, NINJ loans? Did they think that all of us were simply uneducated?
And what of the voices like Roubinni, Whitney, Roach, and yes even Gross. Are they ignorant when they speak of the damage to the dollar, not to mention the solvency issues plaguing the market. Issues that were ignored with securitization and the sale of CDO’s, RMBS, Auction rate market?
What arrogance to think that Realtors have a lock on the correct opinion of the real estate markets.
Were the bloggers wrong?
Talk about shooting the messanger.
deejayoh » Aug 4, 2008 at 8:59 am
It would have been interesting for Aubrey to compare the traffic of the sites, to put the “debate” in context.
DavidB » Aug 4, 2008 at 8:59 am
Good point Ella. I’ve been posting comments for the past 6 months now on the Seattle PI blogs mainly to conteract the optimism of the real estate agents over there. My posts have been primarily related to economic data that has been pretty bad lately so I’ve pointed out that housing prices aren’t likely to increase or stabalize anytime soon. Many of the people over there don’t have any data to back up their statements and they become highly offensive if you post a comment that they don’t agree with.
I think the realtors who post comments over there routinely are hopeful of finding clients or trying to spin information for their industry’s economic gain. I noticed they don’t come here to post any comments!
biliruben » Aug 4, 2008 at 9:31 am
Aubrey sure found my most extreme prediction to publish! I don’t back off from it, but It’s one where I can only be wrong, not right!
vboring » Aug 4, 2008 at 9:36 am
more like debatacle (cross of debate and debacle)
too few open minds. too many unsupported opinions states as truisms. too many vested interests.
there are RE agents that are looking at tough times, especially since many of them are heavily invested in RE. evaporating incomes and declining asset values are a difficult combination.
Groundhogday » Aug 4, 2008 at 10:19 am
We just met a young couple with two kids that moved to Pullman a month ago. Yes, they bought a house because they “heard” that Pullman was insulated from the national real estate bust. Heard this from who? Their Realtor(R) of course!
We have over 200 housing units for sale in August (1 year of supply), compared to 25 two years ago at this time. The rental market has the highest vacancy rate since the early 80’s melt down. There are 150 developed lots for sale and FIVE have sold so far this year (Jan to present). Thanks to the many homes in all market categories both for sale and for rent, we can compute the current Pullman Price/Monthly Rent ratio as ~220. Yeh, no housing bust here!
I agree with Mack, buying a home is one of the most important financial decisions you will ever make. This is exactly why you should NEVER trust a used house sales person to advise you on this decision.
Garth » Aug 4, 2008 at 10:33 am
Tim added a quantcast bug to the bubble, so you can do a pretty good traffic comparison of RCG and the bubble now
http://www.quantcast.com/seattlebubble.com
http://www.quantcast.com/raincityguide.com
Notice the difference in the “addicts” and their share of visits to the two sites, pretty interesting.
Civil Servant » Aug 4, 2008 at 10:42 am
Ella, agree 100% about the arrogance of most real-estate professionals. What makes my teeth itch is not just their intolerance to different opinions but their wish to dictate the parameters of the discussion. Is this house well “sited”? How are the WASL scores in this area? Will you be able to afford monthly payments at the high end of the mortgage you’ve been approved for? OK then, let’s do a deal!
It really is all about the data (Scotsman, I agree with your comment as well). I think it is reasonable to believe that anyone who doesn’t want to share data with me — and to analyze it, and to debate those results — is trying to hide something that the data could reveal. And to any real-estate agent who would counter that this is not part of his or her job, could you tell me again how you’re earning that 3%?
The Tim » Aug 4, 2008 at 10:43 am
Direct traffic comparison from Quantcast:
As far as the “addicts” thing goes, seems to me that indicates that a lot of people (78% “passers-by”) drop by RCG once and find that it isn’t interesting enough to visit again, whereas people come to Seattle Bubble and keep coming back again and again because they find what they’re looking for.
Realist » Aug 4, 2008 at 11:23 am
May I be so audacious as to suggest that even in the current real estate market we all take a deep breath and exercise a bit of patience. Real estate is always a waiting game and timing is everything.
In 1964, before the impatient point and click crowd were born, I worked out a $1,000.00 down payment on a California rambler just two blocks from the beach just south of Santa Cruz, California. The purchase price was, as I recall, $12,000.00.
I just googled the Santa Cruz County Assesssor’s Office and that little home is now (2008-2009) assessed at $587,000.00. I checked for transactions and on February 2, 2007, a sale of the home was recorded in the amount of $660,000.00. Today (08-03-08) Zillow Zestimates the value of the home at $727,000.00.
In my fifty plus years of buying and selling real estate and as a general contractor and more recently as a REALTOR I have seen my share of bubbles and bottoms. My observation is that real estate always pays off. I have no crystal ball but I am confident that real estate will come back bigger and better for those who don’t panic and exercise a little patience.
Sniglet » Aug 4, 2008 at 11:37 am
Unfortunately, 50 years may be too short of a time-frame in which to draw conclusions as to what will happen in real-estate prices. When you look at the really long-term real-estate price studies there are multi-decade periods where prices appreciate above the rate of inflation, and similarly lengthy instances where prices decline. Shiller concluded that in the LONG term, real-estate prices stick with inflation.
Studies also show that since WWII the US has seen an unparalelled time of rapid real-estate appreciation. In other words, the last 60 years have been an abhorration in real-estate price movements. If we are about to undergo a reversion to the (LONG term) historical mean, then the experiences of most living people won’t be too helpful in understanding what will happen.
Just look at how well all the risk models, put together by Phds and Nobel prize winnerrs, have done for Wall Street banks? They tried to construct hedging models that would NEVER fail. Just ask Bear Stearns or LTCM how well that worked out…
oberon » Aug 4, 2008 at 11:40 am
An increase in value from $12,000 to $660,000 over 44 years is a compounded gain of about 9.5% a year. Not bad, but the stock market has performed similarly over the same period of time.
Sniglet » Aug 4, 2008 at 11:46 am
This raises an excellent point. Just look at how well the stock market has done over the last 10 years. Someone who bought the S&P in 1998 will have seen absolutely no gain in 10 years! Dollar cost averaging wouldn’t have helped either. You wouldn’t have been any further ahead having slowly put more money into the S&P every year for the last 10 years.
Heck, T-bills were by far and away a better investment than stocks during the last decade, even with the low rates!
Accepted wisdom has long held that stocks will always go up in the long term. I guess they must be talking in 20 or 40 year time-frames…
If the “traditional” wisdom about stocks doesn’t hold true (i.e. that they ALWAYS go up over the long haul), then why should we trust that the wisdom about real-estate will remain valid too?
Alan » Aug 4, 2008 at 11:49 am
I pull this NYT article out every few months:
This Very, Very Old House by Russell Shorto
Sniglet » Aug 4, 2008 at 11:58 am
This is exactly what has me spooked! Real-estate prices around the world have seen an unprecedented spike in appreciation rates in the last 30 or 40 years. Our whole view of what is “normal” has been completely warped. In my view the credit crunch that is slowly grinding away is the beginning of the end for these recent “happy” decades, where everyone could just get rich by owning a house.
This credit crunch is not some “normal” economic event. It is on a scale, and breadth, that is truly breath-taking, and it isn’t even CLOSE to finding a bottom…
kent » Aug 4, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Realist quote –
In my fifty plus years of buying and selling real estate and as a general contractor and more recently as a REALTOR I have seen my share of bubbles and bottoms. My observation is that real estate always pays off. I have no crystal ball but I am confident that real estate will come back bigger and better for those who don’t panic and exercise a little patience.
I think you are probably right when you look at super exclusive prime property in Santa Cruz. They are not making any more of these properties, so they will likely alway perform better than average. But, I think a true “realist” might also look at the last few years when the average person could no longer afford the average priced home. What happened was the “creative” financing and shaky loans people were sucked into which kept the prices moving higher than they should have gone. The big question is how far too high did they go. No one knows for sure, of course, but I am tending to agree with an earlier comment that prices may have been at an all time high at the end of 2006 when you factor in inflation. Financial institutions are not anxious to repeat the crazy loans of the last few years again for many years to come. And, at the end of the day, I believe that these 2 “rules” will determine cost of housing, on the average of course.
1. The average person must be able to afford the average home.
2. Housing will increase at the same rate as real wage growth.
Peace, out.
Groundhogday » Aug 4, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I agree with Realist. It is important to remain patient. Particularly if you are a buyer, as prices have quite far to fall in order to bring price/income and price/rent ratios back to levels that make financial sense.
But if what if prices shoot back up? Fine, I can rent indefinitely at half the cost of buying.
Bits_of_Real_Panther » Aug 4, 2008 at 2:05 pm
“1. The average person must be able to afford the average home.”
The only way to interpret this comment literally is that a median income household must be able to afford a median price home. If the income distributions across renters and owner-occupiers was identical then this would make sense, but they aren’t and it doesn’t
tarzanchuck » Aug 4, 2008 at 2:10 pm
One of the things to keep in mind with real estate and investing is that you always have to have a place to live.
If we compare real estate values directly with stocks, bonds, etc. the thing that is often forgotten is that when you invest in the stock market, you don’t start out with $300,000 typically.
So let’s say that you buy a house today at $300k and you spend 5% down and you live in it for 10 years. at today’s rates at a 6.25% interest rate on a 30 year fixed fully amortized, you would be looking at a payment of about $1800 a month.
Then let’s be conservative and say that you have 5% appreciation a year, which I believe national appreciation since the depression has been 7% annually, not adjusting for inflation.
In 10 years, the house will appreciate by $188,668.
Now let’s say that instead of doing that, you decided to rent for the next 10 years and you find a simliar house that you can rent for $1200 a month with a fixed rental amount for that time. You then take that $600 a month that you save by not owning and invest it elsewhere at the same rate of 5% a month.
Compounding interest over those 10 years plus what you saved would amount to cash of around $72,000.
Now keep in mind, this does not take into account that rents do increase over time, or the tax deduction you recieve from your mortgage or the fact that most people wouldn’t be disciplined enough to save like that.
So while your real estate investment may perform around the same as a normal mutual fund, you never have the same initial investment that you do when you purchase a home, unless you actually pay cash for it. This is why it’s always talked about having your home as part of your overall investment portfolio.
Alan » Aug 4, 2008 at 2:24 pm
That wasn’t typical with housing either until very recently.
Also, as long as you are leveraging your investment in housing, you might as well compare it to a leveraged investment in the stock market.
deejayoh » Aug 4, 2008 at 2:58 pm
No one will give you 5:1, 10:1, or 20:1 leverage in the stock market. Against the law, isn’t it? And you can only write-off your margin interest against profits, not your income.
there are some structural advantages of home ownership vs. stocks that are not going to change soon..
Garth » Aug 4, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Tim,
In the context of a blog the “addicts” are generally people who comment on posts frequently, and the “passers-by” are usually people who visit from a search on google or links on other sites. While it seems like a small number, 3% of your unique users engaging heavily is really very good when you consider that for most sites 50-90% of their monthly user count comes from searches where most people look at one page for less than a minute and don’t become an engaged reader (in your case quantcast says 56%) so about 44% of your “visitors” are real readers and 6-7% of them participate a lot which is 5-6 times better than most blogs.
For RCG they have more “visitors”, but only 20-25% or so of that traffic is real repeat readers. They get more visitors from fewer indexed pages in google which leads me to believe that their individual pages are either far more keyword laden than yours on average, or they get much more linked traffic. Google says you have 800 inbound links and RCG about 1600.
WestSideBilly » Aug 4, 2008 at 3:16 pm
tarzan @ 24:
7% is not normal for home appreciation (3-4% is) and while rents do go up, so do property taxes, insurance, and maintenance costs. Using realistic housing assumptions (rents go up ~4% annually, property tax and insurance increase about 5% annually, houses increase 3-5% annually, you can get a 4% ROI on a “guaranteed” savings plan, you lose 6% due to transaction costs, etc), buying a SFH always comes out ahead down the road. Most of my models it works out at about 7-8 years. If you go the FSBO/redfin route, you bring that down to 6-7 years.
The risk is there’s one assumption there that isn’t true right now – houses aren’t appreciating. Even going aggressive with the other variables, 2 years of minor depreciation (5-6%) followed by normal 3-5% appreciation after that puts your even date beyond 10 years. That’s a lot more “long term” than most people can commit to.
I’m not one to tell people never to buy, because there are inherent benefits to that.
And, for the record, I never heard anyone consider their home as part of their portfolio until about 4-5 years ago.
The Tim » Aug 4, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I agree Garth, RCG gets a lot more link-love from real estate agents across the country, whereas Seattle Bubble is primarily interesting to people actually in the Seattle area.
I am still not convinced though that RCG has more visitors than Seattle Bubble. Look at the graph I posted above @14. Seattle Bubble’s traffic is consistently higher than RCG. Also every time they post their Google Analytics stats, mine has shown more traffic.
Quantcast’s “Global People” measure combines actual measured traffic with their “panel estimate,” which is a notoriously unreliable method of tracking traffic for niche sites like RCG and Seattle Bubble.
Direct comparisons of actual measured traffic are the only way to reliably compare the volume of visitors to sites, IMO.
deejayoh » Aug 4, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Judging from the commenters I see when reading both sites, the heavy users on RCG and SB seem to be overlapped by about half to two-thirds!
I am more curious as the the readership of the PI blogs. Anyone have any sense if that is higher than RCG/SB?
I am not trying to establish as a popularity contest – I am just curious
Civil Servant » Aug 4, 2008 at 4:50 pm
I don’t visit the PI blogs very often because I have not found them very informative. But when I do, I am always surprised at the amount of heavy lifting that Kary Krismer and Mack McCoy do, especially for guys who are at pains to point out how much important work they do for their clients. From my perspective, the readership numbers — or at least the engaged readership numbers — seem to be significantly higher here.
Garth » Aug 4, 2008 at 5:17 pm
You can generate a lot of traffic without a lot of visitors and a lot of visitors without much traffic depending on site structure and such. Google has 18 links on the main page and one image for example, while the bubble generally has more than 500 links and more than 10 images. Since traffic is a measure of the raw bandwidth each visitor here generates a lot more traffic when they hit the front page here then they do when they hit google. Traffic numbers can also include some spiders or feeds or other automated systems hitting the site that don’t really equate to actual readers either.
If I had had to gamble money before you added the quantcast bug and the RCG updated theirs to provide more info I would have guessed that the bubble had about 5000 repeat readers and RCG about 10,000 per month. With the updated info the RCG numbers are much noisier than yours with a much greater percentage of users coming from search and links which are more like leads on readers than actual engaged readers. Today I would probably guess 7,000-9,000 for the bubble and 6000-8000 for RCG with the bubble having the clear advantage in engagement.
Groundhogday » Aug 4, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Tarzan,
Imagine a scenario whereby rents actually fall due to an increase in supply (gross overbuilding due to speculation and lax lending, check) and a fall in demand (recession, check).
Alan » Aug 4, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Since traffic is a measure of the raw bandwidth each visitor here generates a lot more traffic when they hit the front page here then they do when they hit google.
That isn’t how most sites measure traffic. Unique IP addresses or sessions is much more useful.
deejayoh » Aug 4, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Dont’ mean to take this down the rathole, but if both sites are instrumented with the Quantcast Tag, shouldn’t the visitor count be pretty accurate?
tarzanchuck » Aug 5, 2008 at 11:04 am
Westside Billy @28:
It’s my understanding that 3-4% is inflation, but that home appreciation is much closer to 7% annually. If you look at the US Census bureau info, from 1940 to 2000 the US median price went from $2938 in 1940 to $119,600 in 2000. That equals out to an annual increase of just under 6.4% annually. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/values.html
As far as the investment portfolio issue, this is something that I’ve heard many financial planners say that the first thing they typically tell people when they first meet with them is that if they plan on staying in the same location for more than 3 years, that the most important thing is to buy a house, then start up an IRA or 401k or other investments.
I’m not a financial planner though, and i’m not all that old. So that could me a more current thing for financial planners to advise their clients on.
Also keep in mind that those are national home appreciation numbers. Real Estate appreciation has much more to do with local markets than national numbers. Given the same census bureau statistics, N. Dakota had only appreciated at a rate of 5.8% annually, whereas California as a state appreciated at 7.1% annually over the same period of time.
biliruben » Aug 5, 2008 at 11:13 am
Tarzenchuck choosing 1940 as a starting point is cherry picking the low-point. If you’d chosen 1916 or 1946, the increase would be less than half what you quote – or just about inflation.
You are engaging in classic statistical dishonesty.
David McManus » Aug 5, 2008 at 11:27 am
Real Estate appreciation has much more to do with local markets than national numbers.
Seems like I’ve heard that somewhere before.
tarzanchuck » Aug 5, 2008 at 11:33 am
I’m not cherry picking. If I wanted to cherry pick I would’ve started in 1948 and then ended in 2006 to show a far better appreciation. The US Census bureau has only been doing the census since 1940 on this information. The last one they did was 2000. I was merely showing this from the data available from a place that I think most of us would deem as a reliable source. Take a look at the link that I sent you.
What I was showing is what long term gains in real estate values have been historically, especially since the great depression and the advent of the 30 year fixed, elimination of due-on-demand clauses in mortgages and the creation of fannie and freddie.
I agree that you could start from any date you want to bolster your position. If you have data from another source that you would deem more reliable, please put it in. But Census data doesn’t have an ulterior motive or point they’re trying to make or something they’re trying to sell. It’s just a snapshot of what our country looked like at that point in history.
tarzanchuck » Aug 5, 2008 at 11:35 am
sorry, there are national trends in how real estate appreciates and depreciates. The degree to which that happens is usually dictated by local economic factors. That is why we appreciate here better than in Detroit or Oklahoma. Because people actually want to live here. Supply and demand.
biliruben » Aug 5, 2008 at 11:48 am
http://patrick.net/housing/contrib/housing_projection.html
WestSideBilly » Aug 5, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Those census numbers are a bit odd. Even other info on the census site doesn’t correlate to those prices. Regardless, the 60 year period covered gives about 6.5% annual vs 4% annual CPI growth, and as BR points out, 1940 is a lousy starting spot, roughly akin to picking 1934 as a starting point for examining ROI for stocks.
OFHEO’s stats (WA,OR,ID I think) show about 4.5-5% from ‘91 to ‘08. Case Shiller stats for Seattle show about 6% from ‘90 to ‘08. And that’s coming out of a housing slump in the 80s and through the biggest housing bubble in our history.
The point still stands – counting on 7% annual home inflation now is a very risky assessment.
tarzanchuck » Aug 5, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Didn’t we actually have bigger housing appreciation bubble in the late 70’s than we just did currently?
Garth » Aug 5, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Alan,
You are right, in the context of the chart tim showed the traffic is some people metric, not raw HTTP traffic.
deejayoh,
Visitors are not all created equal. you for example are one of the visitors in those numbers and are a real estate professional in the seattle area who reads the blog daily and often participates, while someone who found a link via this search on google for example would also be counted as a visitor:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=seattle+bubble+indoor
(3 links down or so) The searcher is probably going to be on the site for less than a minute and leave, as they are looking for links about indoor sports bubbles in seattle, not a real estate one.
Harley Lever » Aug 5, 2008 at 6:12 pm
The Tim,
Below is a more comprehensive comparison of the two site. You are being beat on several fronts, but there are certain aspects you can control and others you cannot.
The age of your site for instance is out of your hand, but is weighted nonetheless. Older sites tend to be weighted more than newer site. Raincity Guide is twice as old as your site.
With basic link building you can achieve higher ranking. One of the biggest mistakes I see with your site is that it is not in the DMOZ. This is key because many search engines use this as a reference of “legitimate sites”.
Your site is being “out linked” and “out pressed”. Link building is key and getting links from highly ranked sites will give you more “link juice” or link strength. Having more press releases, press mentions, and distributing articles through ezines might be a great way to level the palying field.
You have to realize that Raincityguide has several people constantly working on getting more links and establishing more press relations. You would need to “staff up” to help get you even.
However all in all, your blog is doing great. The difference in ranking is minimal in the scope of things. As a user of both sites I go to the two blogs for separate reasons. I go to Raincity guide often to use their MLS search and read articles. I go to the Seattle Bubble to look at the analyses and and get my butt chewed. :>)
Seattle Bubble:
Alexa traffic rank 205,463
Links:3
Pagerank Of Homepage 5
Avg Pagerank Of Top 10 Pages On Site0
Dmoz Links 0
Median Pagerank Of Top 10 Pages On Site 0
Google News Mentions 2
Google Blog Search Links 3
Google Domain Mentions 72
Compete Rank 172,766
Alexa Rank 205,463
Yahoo Site Explorer Links To Domain 33,281
Quantcast Rank 73,720
Wikipedia Links 0
Technorati Blog Reactions 4,297
Age In Days 655
Raincityguide:
Alexa Rank: 147,832
Links 291
Info
Pagerank Of Homepage – 5
Dmoz Links 1
Google News Mentions 1
Google Blog Search Links 169
Google Domain Mentions 3,890
Compete Rank 75,890
Alexa Rank 147,832
Yahoo Site Explorer Links To Domain 79,660
Quantcast Rank 40,075
Wikipedia Links 1
Technorati Blog Reactions 0
Age In Days 1,236
The Tim » Aug 6, 2008 at 8:32 am
Harley, did all that info come from Alexa?
Alexa is just about the least reliable measure of site traffic and volume that there is. I put the value of their data at about the same level as if I took an opinion poll of ten random people at Gasworks park. They can’t even get a basic fact like the age of the site correct.
Look at the archive pages for each site. Seattle Bubble was started in August 2005. Rain City Guide was started in March 2005. They’re a whopping 5 months older.
Harley Lever » Aug 6, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Hi The Tim,
No I get this information form SEOmoz.org I am a paid member. It is designed for SEO professionals. It has several measures it uses to determine the overall strength of a website and several tools you can use to measure your site as well as others. Don’t get me wrong, the age of a site is not as important as the number of inbound links and the strength of those links.
However age does play a factor especially for new sites. New sites are often “sand boxed” for 9 months or so until they prove themselves not to be a spam site.
Your biggest challenge is inbound links. You should try to create as many links as possible whenever possible.