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Monday 1 January 2007

The Web Witnesses

To mark the new year the nice people at Alexa have released their latest website rankings, and the results again indicate just how effective – or ineffective – the media ministries of various COG groups and individuals are.

This time around, in order to create a basis for comparison, the rankings of several non-COG and mainline Christian groups are included in italics. How does the UCG website, for example, stack up against the Seventh-day Adventists?

First, an overview. RCG is still making gains, but neither the Vatican nor the Mormons should be too worried. Ron Dart continues to do very well, his independent Born To Win website outclasses all of the “orgs” except RCG and UCG. At present 23 COG websites (that AW monitors) are in the top million, 14 in the top half million, and 8 in the leading quarter million. AW continues to crawl up the slippery ladder and now stands at number 9. Rankings were sampled 1 January.

The details: Top Ten

-- Mormon Church (www.lds.org) 2,690
-- The Vatican (www.vatican.va) 9,908
-- Jehovahs Witnesses (www.watchtower.org) 26,884
-- US Catholic Bishops (www.usccb.org) 34,140
-- Church of England (www.cofe.anglican.org) 43,972

-- Unitarians (www.uua.org) 56,847
01 Pack RCG (www.thercg.org) 64,342
-- Seventh-day Adventists (www.adventist.org) 68,461
-- Lutherans [ELCA] (www.elca.org) 69,449
-- Salvation Army (www.salvationarmy.org) 77,221
-- Assemblies of God (ag.org) 89,909
-- US Episcopal/Anglicans (www.episcopalchurch.org) 94,107

-- Presbyterians [PCUSA] (www.pcusa.org) 105,812
02 UCG (www.ucg.org) 106,376
-- Methodists [UMC] (www.umc.org) 113,140
03 Born To Win [Dart] (www.borntowin.net) 152,990
-- Billy Graham (www.billygraham.org) 153,106
04 Real Truth [Pack] (www.realtruth.org) 159,977
-- United Church of Christ (www.ucc.org) 162,450
05 WCG [Tkach] (www.wcg.org) 185,087
-- Southern Baptists (www.sbc.net) 191,567
06 Good News [UCG] (www.gnmagazine.org) 203,832
-- WELS Lutheran (www.wels.net) 218,930
07 The Trumpet [PCG] (www.thetrumpet.com) 224,630
08 Bible Study [Ruth] (www.biblestudy.org) 239,217
-- Orthodox Church in America (www.oca.org) 239,665
-- LCMS Lutheran (www.lcms.org) 248,802
09 Ambassador Watch [this blog] 260,151
10 Reluctant (www.reluctant-messenger.com) 270,690

11 - 23

11 Bob Thiel (www.cogwriter.com) 325,613
12 Tomorrow's World [LCG] (www.tomorrowsworld.org) 332,447
13 Beyond Today [UCG] (www.beyondtoday.tv) 339,705
14 Fred Coulter (www.cbcg.org) 438,424
-- United Church of Canada (www.united-church.ca) 462,482
-- Disciples of Christ (www.disciples.org) 476,842
-- Community of Christ [RLDS] (www.cofchrist.org) 482,885
-- Uniting Church of Australia (www.uca.org.au) 487,386

15 Key of David [PCG] (www.keyofdavid.com) 536,297
-- US Reformed Church (www.rca.org) 547,149
16 Logon [Cox] (www.logon.org) 577,180
17 ICG [Armstrong] (www.intercontinentalcog.org) 694,210
18 GTA [Armstrong] (www.garnertedarmstrong.ws) 814,594
19 Vision [Hulme] (www.vision.org) 827,593
20 Ritenbaugh (cgg.org) 855,25
21 LCG (www.lcg.org) 885,403
22 The Journal (www.thejournal.org) 905,516
-- Christian Science (www.tfccs.org) 920,346
23 ASK [Sielaff] (www.askelm.com) 987,954

9 comments:

Felix Taylor, Jr. said...

Happy New Year Gavin!!!

May 2007 be a great for you and your family. May Ambassador Watch be even more exciting this year!

Jennie said...

Hello Gavin. I often visited the old AW account, usually daily, and was very disappointed when it was no longer available. Thank you for giving us the new AW and the Otagosh sites. I am deeply appreciative.

Jen

Anonymous said...

RCG place on the ratings has to do with the amount of money Pack spends on google ads. He is spending a lot.

Positive Dennis

Douglas Becker said...

There must be some bleatings over at the den in the lair of a certain Australian cultmeister -- his Alexa ratings are not what you'd expect from reading his shameless self-promotion.

As for comparisons, just for amusement, check out UCG vs CCg.

jorgheinz said...

Hi Gavin,

This COG stuff is getting as serious as radio and TV ratings.

And AW is still holding a very good position in the Blog Stakes.
I will take a buck each way in the COG HANDICAP for Gerry to be nagging in the rear.

Jorgheinz

Anonymous said...

In terms of serious predictions for 2007, I'm thinking that the internet is going to become for the modern ACOGs what radio was for HWA. Look at the number of privately maintained websites, dedicated to spreading Armstrongism. The number is growing!

Personally, I've looked to radio and television in my attempts to detect any major Armstrongite presence or influence. It is nowhere near the level achieved in the '70s, when HWA and GTA were names known practically in every household. For the first time in decades, I saw a spot ad for a COG broadcast this weekend. It was for Flurry's "Key of David" program in our local area. But, I can't help but wonder if the major influence might be forthcoming from the ol' "information superhighway" in the coming years.

Someone I once respected commented towards the beginning of last year that dissident style websites were probably going to die out within the near future, because the COGs are dying. I'm not so sure he got that quite right. Seems like we may still have a lot of work to do.

BB

Anonymous said...

These ratings mean absolutely nothing. Alexa ONLY give stats for people using THEIR TOOLBAR. This is very far fetched to be an aggregate of WEB traffic to a site.

This is from Alexa:
About the Alexa Traffic Rankings
A listing of all sites on the Web, sorted by traffic...
Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users. The information is sorted, sifted, anonymized, counted, and computed, until, finally, we get the traffic rankings shown in the Alexa service. The process is relatively complex, but if you have a need to know, please read on.

Anonymous said...

Poor "Anonymous" - is your favorite website doing poorly?

Fact 1: there's NO completely accurate measure of total Web traffic... but Alexa does what any good polling organization does - it takes a SAMPLE.

Fact 2: there's no better measure of comparing Web traffic simply because Alexa doesn't play favorites. Anyone can say "hey, my website is doing super fabulously." We can only take THEIR word for it. Alexa puts them all on a level playing field.

Of course, if you can suggest a BETTER way of comparing web sites - we all would appreciate you sharing it.

NB

Anonymous said...

Another benefit of the Alexa ratings would be relative comparisons over time for any one organization--say, comparing where it is now to where it was six months ago.