Top 10 Canadian Websites
I like to keep track of who’s watching what so I turn to Alexa.com frequently to figure out what people are doing when they’re surfing the net. I know, I know, Alexa’s stats are flawed, blah, blah, blah, but it is a quick and dirty tool for checking on web stats. Yesterday I was trying to figure out the top “Made in Canada” websites, you know, the popular ones that all the Americans are tuning into. I was a bit stymied in that analysis as Alexa doesn’t show the country of origin of the web sites it ranks.
However I was able to find the list of websites most viewed by Canadians, the ones we visit when surfing, no matter where they are hosted. This then is the list of the top 10 web sites most viewed by Canadians as ranked by Alexa.
1 Google
2 Windows Live
3 Facebook
4 Yahoo
5 YouTube
6 MSN
7 Wikipedia
8 Blogger.com
9 Government of Canada
10 Kijiji
The list contains all of your normal suspects, Google, Facebook, YouTube etc but then what to my wondering eyes did appear but…look again….the Government of Canada. I almost fell off my chair. The Government of Canada website ranks number 9 in Canadian popularity. What a country, it makes me so proud to be Canadian.
We look more at the Government of Canada website than we look at Flickr (#29 and a made in Canada site), and than we tune into NHL.com (#33, we’ll give Canada credit for this one). What’s up here, the government is more popular than hockey on the web? We value our relationship with the government more than potential human relationships as Plenty of Fish, another made in Canada site is number 41. But wait, more than anything else, in Canada the government is more popular than porn. Yes, the top porn site (pornhub.com) only came in at number 24. See, I bet you’re proud of your little old country now too eh?
So I checked out the Government of Canada website and found lots of good stuff there…pictures of flags, pictures of Stephen Harper, pictures of Stephen Harper with flags…you get the idea. What struck me most was that the site was free, I didn’t need to give them my email, I didn’t need to pay for a subscription, I didn’t need to look at those pesky pop ups and wait for it, not even one banner ad (unless you count the pictures of Stephen Harper as ads.)
We’re missing a big opportunity here to earn some money and reduce taxes in these economically challenged times. With all those eyeballs, what are we doing to monetize the site? We could charge a monthly subscription to all those Icelandic folks who are checking out the site to marvel at our budgetary prowess. We could put up banner ads to promote our health care system to Americans. We could use it to cross promote other great Canadian sites like the Ontario government website which doesn’t even make the top 100 list in Canada.
Since Stephen has become so great recently at consulting Canadians I would encourage you to reciprocate. Take a moment, write the Prime Minister and tell him what you would do to monetize his website. This way you too can contribute to make Canada a place where the government is more popular than porn.