How important are webrings?
The new stats feature may make some people say: "What, doesn't it
result in more ring traffic?"
For instance, when I looked at the summary statistics for my own ring, I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed. On an average, each site refers 1.3 visitors per day to other ring sites, the list page or the ring homepage, while each site receives 1.8 visitors per day from the ring. At the same time I know that my webring is more successful in this respect than other similar rings. So, what's the conclusion of that? Are webrings not interesting? Well, if we didn't know if already, we learn from this that webrings are not great *traffic generators*, at least not compared to successful listings in the big search engines and web directories. Nevertheless, for personal sites with little base traffic, the additional traffic from webring memberships may still be considered important. But to me, the principal reason for belonging to a webring is that the ring navigation panel adds value to my site. Take my own ring again (sorry, but it's easier to explain that way :) ): It's a webring for sites with quotations. At my personal site I have a page with quotations that is, not unexpectedly, a member of that ring. A few times I have received thanks messages to my private address, or appreciatory notes in the guestbook at my personal site, from people who have actually enjoyed the webring. In other words, they started at my quotes page, surfed some other member sites in the ring, and came back to my site in order to express their appreciation of something they perceived as an extension of my personal site. Conclusion: The ring membership enriched their web experience when visiting my quotations page. Another way to say (basically) the same thing is that webrings make it easier to find similar resources on the web. This is how I look at it. It would be interesting to know about the views of a few other list members. Are webrings important? And, if so, why? / Gunnar
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