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
Jas-n
Do we get TSA points if we can guess the amount of unique visitors TSA gets per month?
My guess is at least 1
bunimomike
There’s quite a gulf between the bottom half and getting past Eurogamer. However, look at IGN’s pages visited per visitor. That is very, very impressive.
bunimomike
From an advertising perspective, if you pursue things aggressively, I’d suggest approaching companies in the UK who sell gaming industry goods (and associated). Hardware, software, brown goods, etc.
Also, I did some research into the table (and yourselves) and it’s accurate.
colossalblue
Bear in mind that a lot of those sites split reviews, previews and articles (and news) across multiple pages. That’s something we only do if we feel it makes the story more readable or makes sense to have those divisions (as with the Move preview stuff).
But yes, IGN’s figures are extremely impressive :)
bunimomike
They are, matey. Especially as it’s over double Gamespot’s figure! The latter two columns are important from a community perspective. If TSA can get decent figures there, you’re onto to a winner as surfers are less likely to visit your site with the smash-n-grab approach.
Does it count forum pages? If so, I’m on a eleventeen bajillion pages per visit, which’ll bump things up. ;-)
jimmy-google
I stopped looking at IGN a while back because it took me so long to find what I was looking for. I can find most things via google news and newsnow.
DJ-Katy
IGN and GameSpot’s figures (at least) will be grossly bloated because half the time when you visit the site you get an advert page first that you have to click past.
I don’t believe for a second VG247 gets that few unique visitors per month.
bunimomike
I was just looking at that not two minutes ago. Seems way off. Even with VG getting less UK visitors (percentage-wise) than TSA does. It’s still not enough to make up the difference.
nofi
The figures for VG247 can’t be right, not based on approximations from our Analytics, anyway. The chart is bonkers.
Charmed_Fanatic
Highest average visit is 7 … wow short