The Top 50 Websites by Traffic in 1998

http://www.geekosystem.com/1998-web-traffic-stats/

by umiaq • 16 years ago

48 28 16 years ago

geekosystem.com

rcfox• 16 years ago

(Comment here because I can't be bothered to create a login on every random website just to comment.)

How are aol.com and yahoo.com both ranked #3 in 2010?

kanwisher• 16 years ago

He fixed it, its now crossed through.

vaksel2• 16 years ago

some of them just changed the urls.

i.e. "BLUEMOUNTAINARTS.COM" is now actually just bluemountain.com not a #9 site...but still not 18 million either

thiele2• 16 years ago

Agreed. CDnow, for example, was acquired by Amazon, so their traffic ranking is meaningless too. I still have a soft spot in my heart for CDnow :)

c3o• 16 years ago

Likewise MININGCO.COM is now About.com (#31 -> #65)

matrix• 16 years ago

All I can think of when I see this list is massive missed business opportunities. Quite a few of those business have absolutely no excuse for squandering their first-mover advantage (mapquest, altavista, etc).

Which is great because it makes me more confident of being able to overcome an established player in the market today.

inerte2• 16 years ago

There are good excuses, like browser capabilities, broadband, % of users online, ad serving platforms, ad agencies, mobile usage, knowledgable people/employees. Heck, I could go on and on and on.

There was absolute no way for Google Maps to have happened in 1999, the strongest evidence being that it didn't happen in 1999.

RyanMcGreal• 16 years ago

True but irrelevant. When Google Maps did happen, there's no reason why MapQuest could not have built the same thing at the same time.

The fact that they didn't, and that Google did, suggests opportunities for upstarts (sorry, startups) to get the jump on established players by introducing disruptive innovations.

abossy• 16 years ago

I'm surprised you're getting downvoted. I completely agree -- the existence (and demise) of these companies are largely dependent on the circumstances of the time. For instance, a majority of the top companies were branded web hosting companies like GeoCities, AngelFire, etc. This market has shrunk considerably, probably due to the rise of blogs.

turnersauce• 16 years ago

I feel as though a table may have been a more appropriate way to present that data...

chronomex• 16 years ago

More readable, certainly.

alexyim• 16 years ago

Whoa angelfire.com

It's like it's been in a time capsule

agentq• 16 years ago

It's good to see that the public's relative need for weather(.com) forecasts has not changed in the last twelve years.

billturner• 16 years ago

Related is a recent post on waxy.org with a list of the top 100 websites of 1999: http://waxy.org/2010/02/dennet_and_the_top_100_websites_of_1...

vaksel2• 16 years ago

#90 911 Gifts - ouch...wonder if these guys got killed by 9/11 or if they crashed before that

ilamont• 16 years ago

Blue Mountain Arts. Was anyone else here one of the millions who saw Internet greeting cards as a great idea?

What were we thinking?

gojomo• 16 years ago

In a way, they were -- they're just now called 'virtual gifts' and 'wall posts' and 'app notifications'.

phillaf• 16 years ago

Bonzi.com still ranks #1 in my heart.

RevRal• 16 years ago

Seeing that gave me goosebumps and a little bit of nostalgia.

mortenjorck• 16 years ago

I'll always wonder what percentage of those uniques were actually user-initiated.

philwelch• 16 years ago

A lot of free web hosts. What I remember most about those days is how many people just created web pages about Star Trek or something, threw it up on a free web host (or even their ISP's web hosting), and sometimes even kept it updated. Now we have Facebook and Posterous and Wikia, but all of that tries to fit it in a box, to make it easy or private or constrained to the form of a blog or wiki or whatever. Back in the day you just wrote HTML files (there was even a form on Geocities to write an HTML file in your browser) and you weren't constrained to any real form.

The Top 50 Websites by Traffic in 1998

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