blog.Cellarer

This is an analysis of the ranking of wine sites.

Establishment vs. bloggers

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 blog on line. The list attempts to highlight writers that you should discover. Only the better 40% of the websites are shown.

Recession

The websites are still as good as they were before the credit implosion of September 2008. Yet their financial possibilities are greatly reduced by the coming depression. This is why the valuations shown are smaller than in the previous quarter. Many websites have seen their valuation divided by about 3 in the course of a year (since the contest started).
In the middle of the pack, compare the struggles of many US sites to the growth of sites based in Asia.

What other trends can you see from the rankings?

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 also considered for addition to another tool: a search engine dedicated to wine and food.

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

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 .

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.

By this post I am launching a contest.

My goal is to build a parade of wine websites — sorted by quality.

You can participate by e-mailing me for a website you like by Wednesday 7th November. A condition is that the site primarily talks about wine.

Cellar.com proposes a search engine dedicated to wine and food. The wine websites selected for the search engine are also candidates to ranking as best wine sites.

Wine producers and wine sellers are excluded. Some of them run wonderful websites but there would be too many candidates.

Here are the criteria I use for ranking the sites. You can follow up by subscribing to the feed on websites .

Update: the results are now available.