blog.Cellarer

I have searched the web for sites about wine. I think I now have a pretty comprehensive pool (of 260 sites). Webmasters need not apply as the contest includes all sites. I display only the 120 ‘best’ — ‘best’ is evaluated with public website metrics.

So lie back, relax, and enjoy my comments on the results.

A comprehensive pool of candidates

I have expanded the set of websites that I retrieve metrics for. Their number has grown from 180 to 260 this quarter. This list cannot be the complete list of all the websites about wine but I propose that it is coming close.

Newcomers

Some sites are appearing for the first time. The highest ranked sites of these newly appeared sites (Avenue Vine, Jancis Robinson and Wine Review Online) are not new at all: they just were not known at the time of the previous website pool. This shows that this directory is an opportunity for everybody to discover websites (starting with myself).

Off-line support

You may notice that half the biggest websites are supported — and promoted — by off-line operations. They are Web appendices of successful non-Internet ventures: the Wine Spectator, The Pour, eRobertParker, Avenue Vine, Wine Enthusiast, Jancis Robinson, Natalie McLean.

USA dominates

The first 8 websites stem from operations based in the US. The majority of the listed sites are written from that country. The following facts may contribute: the USA are still the country the most present on the Web, they still dominate the English-speaking culture and they are on a trend to become the top wine drinking country in the world.

Foreigners

So here is a sample of excellent websites which have pure players (without offline operations) and not based in the USA:

• #9 The Winedoctor (England);
• #15 Spittoon (England);
• #26 Wine-pages (Scotland);
• #41 French Scout (France);
• #46 Burgundy-report (Switzerland);
• #68 Wino-sapien (Australia).

How to participate

Websites are automatically included in the contest as soon as I learn of their existence. To be eligible to the next issue of the Cellarer wine directory, the below conditions must be met:

1. The main topic should be wine.
2. Producing estates and wine sellers are excluded. Some of them run wonderful websites but the type of information is different.

If you disagree with the directory criteria, please comment below or e-mail me.

Once the above conditions are fulfilled the websites are considered for addition to a search engine dedicated to wine and food.

Here are the criteria I use for rating the sites. You can follow the directory evolution by subscribing to the feed on websites .

I have spent months searching the web for sites about wine. I think I now have a pretty comprehensive pool (of 180 sites). Webmasters need not apply as the contest includes all sites. I display only the 80 ‘best’ — ‘best’ is evaluated with public website metrics.

Herebelow is a story of the poll and an analysis of the results.

A comprehensive pool of candidates

I have expanded the set of websites that I retrieve metrics for. Their number has grown from 90 to 180. This list cannot be the complete list of all the websites about wine but I propose that it is coming close.

Better data

The number of processed sites has grown as indicated above. Furthermore two metrics were interesting but brought their own set of problems.

The value of traffic used to be clearly out of the mark. I have improved the metric by averaging, aggregating and otherwise correcting the data for all sites. The traffic figure is now increased (uniformly for all sites) so as to show an amount that is credible: the real (private) traffic figures are no extremely far from those publicly displayed.

The other problem was the variability of the backlinks metric. I could not relate it to the site profiles: a few notorious sites showed few links. So this metric is out.

Ins and outs

Some sites are no longer showing. In general this is not because they are lacking in any way. It is only because of the growth of the competing pool.

Other sites are appearing for the first time. The highest ranked sites of these newly appeared sites (Natalie, Free the grapes, the Doctor, Classic, Wines and vines, Ken’s) are not new at all: they just were not known at the time of the previous website pool. This shows that this directory is an opportunity for everybody to discover websites (starting with myself).

How to participate

Websites are automatically included in the contest as soon as I learn of their existence. To be eligible to the next issue of the Cellarer wine directory, the below conditions must be met:

1. The main topic should be wine.
2. Producing estates and wine sellers are excluded. Some of them run wonderful websites but the type of information is different.

If you disagree with the directory criteria, please comment below or e-mail me.

Once the above conditions are fulfilled the websites are considered for addition to a search engine dedicated to wine and food.

Here are the criteria I use for rating the sites. You can follow the directory evolution by subscribing to the feed on websites or by subscribing to the mailing list about website optimization.

Elsewhere

There is a complementary contest: the American Wine Blog Awards. It has a focus on US blogs and uses some subjective judgment by peers. The purpose is entirely different to that of the Cellarer ranking, which automatically includes all sites and is limited by publically available data (which mostly is not directly influenced by peers). The American Wine Blog Awards were published in March.

I spent months reading websites about wine; I came to discover that there are a lot of them. Now I have assessed them and ranked only the 50 ‘best’.

Herebelow is an analysis of the results.

The big guns

The traffic levels are very much below those of mainstream operations.
Yet a few sites dominate the pack. This is partly due to their early appearance on the Web (Wine Spectator, Wine lovers page). It is also partially because they have the weight of an offline publication behind them (Wine Spectator, the New York Times, Wine Advocate).

The challengers are Vinography and Dr. Vino.

Diversity

In the last few years the web offer has immensely diversified. Everybody and their wine supplier now has a blog.
There now are many quality wine critics who comment on line. Some belong to the mainstream media, others not.
You can have your voice too and this is good for eveybody — except some big brands.
In this pack of numerous wine websites, however, some rise steadily by virtue of:

• producing consistently good content that people want to read;
• or being regularly cited by their peers.

Two consistent sites doubled their valuation this quarter: Wine weekly to #24 and Gollywinedrops to #42.

How to participate

For a website to be eligible to the next issue of the Cellarer wine directory, the below conditions must be met:

1. The main topic should be wine.
2. Producing estates and wine sellers are excluded. Some of them run wonderful websites but the type of information is different.
3. Either the PageRank is at least 4 or the number of visitors is at least 1,000 per month.

If you disagree with the directory criteria, please comment below or e-mail me.

Once the above conditions are fulfilled the best ranked websites are considered for addition to a search engine dedicated to wine and food.

Here are the criteria I use for ranking the sites. You can follow the directory evolution by subscribing to the feed on websites or by subscribing to the mailing list about website optimization.

This is an analysis of the ranking of wine websites.

Analysis of results

Two websites clearly stand out as the biggest wine hubs: the Wine Spectator and the Wine lovers page. This in part is explained by their quality. It is also explained by the long time they have been known by wine enthusiasts.

Having an off-line reputation clearly helps. This is illustrated by the presence in the top five of the Wine Spectator, the New York Times and Robert Parker.

In the last few years the wine web offer has immensely diversified. There now are many quality wine critics who comment on line. The latest domain names listed are from 2006 and 2007:

• Behind the Vines
• Bigger Than Your Head
• French Scout

Actually I have examined some websites that do not appear in this top 50. They are not listed because the others are even better!

In general the valuation shows an institutional bias. This is why I computed a second metric: the website popularity. Please click on the ‘Popularity’ heading to sort wine websites by public support.

What trends can you see from the rankings?

How to participate

For a website to be eligible to the next Cellarer.com wine directory, the below conditions must be met:

1. The main topic should be wine.
2. Producing estates and wine sellers are excluded. Some of them run wonderful websites but the information type is different.
3. Either the number of visitors is at least 1,000 per month or the PageRank is at least 4.

If you disagree with the directory criteria, please comment below.

Once the above conditions are fulfilled the best ranked websites are considered for addition to a search engine dedicated to wine and food.

Here are the criteria I use for ranking the sites. You can follow the directory evolution by subscribing to the feed on websites or by subscribing to the mailing list about website optimization.