Industry business publication, MCV, has today published a top ten list. Don’t worry, it’s not the usual gaming top ten – there’s no reference to boobs or reasons why one console is better than another. It is very interesting though.
The list ranks the UK’s most popular video game websites based on the number of UK-based visits and pageviews they achieved in the month of June (that was the month E3 spat a mountain of news on us). That’s a useful resource if you’re an advertiser looking for the best return on your marketing budget. The problem is this: the list looks bizarrely under-powered.
Even though it only applies to UK traffic and a lot of visitors to these sites will be from the US (currently around a third of TSA traffic is US-based) the figures still seem very low in comparison to our own. We don’t disclose our traffic rates unless you’re an advertiser wanting to give us money (which doesn’t happen nearly as often as we’d like!) but we’ll let you in on something: If TSA had been included in the list we would have been around halfway up and well ahead of some sites that we’re almost certain that we couldn’t be beating for traffic.
As you know, we’re immensely proud of how big TSA has grown but we didn’t for a moment believe that we were as big as this league table seems to imply. Either we’re doing a whole lot better than we thought we were or that list isn’t nearly as accurate as would-be investors would like it be.
Update: In the interests of full disclosure, we use Analytics to gather our figures, this chart uses ComScore.
Image Credit: MCV and ComScore
Mikiyaru
I wont lie to the fact that i often check Eurogamer and IGN for news along with TSA. But this is more than a site, its a community we have here and thats worth more than any info the other sites can give me :)
Amphlett
Sorry, I’m confused now. If you’re saying that you would rate up along the mid-table sites, why isn’t TSA in the table?
colossalblue
I assume we weren’t included in the group that they surveyed since all the sites listed are large, heavily commercialised outlets.
Bilbo_bobbins
Congratulations guys! The only other site I visit “AFTER” TSA to keep me occupied is N4G or whatever its called, and most of the time its full of rubbish.
hazelam
same here, tsa and n4g are my first ports of call for game news.
n4g doesn’t have the same community as tsa though, 99% of the stories on n4g end up in a flamewar between xbox fanboys and playstation fanboys, wii owners are too worn out to argue. :)
Doofer_Nasenmann
I had a short look at comscore and there were some tables with the note “excluding public computers, mobile phones, pda…”. With all those people here complaining about the iphone spell check all the time it seems you have too many visitors by phones ;)
stonyk
Very true. I only really ever visit by iPhone.
Sent from my iPhone.
a inferior race
I’m really surprised how low the unique amount of users for eurogamer is. How did they come up with these figures? Did they take a sample and then just multiply it?
spooferbarnabas
Thats seems a very strange table, i honestly can’t believe the figures are that low but congrats to TSA if they are in fact correct :)
colossalblue
That’s exactly how we’re thinking. We’d love it to be true because that would place us much higher up the rankings than we thought. We do have our doubts about its accuracy though.
Jordaaaan
I use TSA as my gaming news feed because it’s so quick and simple to get around and it’s not constantly bombarding you with advertisements and other nasty things, that and it’s also fast to give news which has just happened.
cc_star
IGN, really?
hannes_truce
I can tell you that the figures for a certain site on that table owned by my employers are completely accurate.
hannes_truce
Which menas: good effing work TSA :-D
hazelam
i guess quality shines through.
can i have my bribe now?
gazzagb
Don’t Future own 3 of the sites in that list?
hannes_truce
indeed, and I’ve just dug out the figures for the other two which are also pretty much spot on.
gazzagb
Wow. Well done TSA then!
gazzagb
The data doesn’t seem accurate if you ask me, although if it is then well done TSA!