This only goes to January, who wants to take bets that Shutterstock passed iStock in February?

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/istockphoto.com+shutterstock.com+dreamstime.com/?metric=sess&months=6

Uhhh, I think that each contributor will see different results. Just because your month at SS may surpass someone else's doesn't mean the world has changed.

Uhhh, I think that each contributor will see different results. Just because your month at Shutterstock may surpass someone else's doesn't mean the world has changed.

If we are to have any idea of what is going on, we either have to take published data (e.g. from iStock's Feb sales thread, from the site traffic analysis or even from the data on the side of this page) or take our own statistics (after six years as my number one agency, iStock (ignoring partner sales) slid into second place for me last August and has never recovered). When personal data and most pieces of public information point in the same direction, then I think the world probably has changed.

A more contentious question is: WHY has it changed? Is it the search/site problems? Is it the attempt to shift into midstock/trad pricing? Is it the pollution of the site with wholly-owned and vetta content that departs from the microstock "look"? Is it pricing? Is it the insult to suppliers through commission cuts? Is it Thinkstock?

Maybe it is telling that it its just so easy to think of things that have happened recently that MIGHT have a negative impact but very hard to think of anything recent that MIGHT have had a positive impact (please correct me if there are positive things that I haven't noticed). When you constantly make changes to your business and you spend a year when every change has negative implications for either your customers or your suppliers, it seems fair to think that your management has entirely lost the plot and is going to be punished through the bottom line.

This only goes to January, who wants to take bets that Shutterstock passed iStock in February?

Yup, scary:


Vast difference between alexa and siteanalytics.
For example, siteanalytics says that 1,823 sites link in to iStock, alexa says 16,115.
Hmmm.

worth noting in the stats that shutterstock has a different site for contributors. Every time contributors check in at Istock it would be adding to the stats.

Supposing for a second that these charts are to be viewed as reliable indicators that traffic is down at istock, I'd suggest that maybe istock HQ not only doesn't care about this but that they planned on it. They would have to know that constantly raising prices and introducing expensive new collections would drive some buyers away. They're also actively marketing ThinkStock to istock buyers and trying to drive traffic to the subscription service. They're after more money from a smaller base of regular customers, as well as a greater percentage of the profits via TS subscriptions. The casual image buyer is no longer a priority at istock, so if some small-time buyers leave and it's reflected in traffic stats, I doubt it would matter much to istock HQ.  

In my opinion, anyway, and again assuming that the chart is accurate.

Sorry to pour cold water on your theories but Alexa is a small dataset. For example I worked in a large corporation with over 200,000 client workstations, all of which were locked down so that something like Alexa could not be installed. This is typical in the corporate world. So corporate traffic is way under reported by Alexa.

If you compare IS versus SS on netcraft.com

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=www.istockphoto.com

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=shutterstock.com

You will see they are ranked 1806 versus 661914 respectively

For the 10'th time, please ignore those silly sites. They mean nothing what-so-ever.  Any attempt to conclude statistical data from such sites is bound to be WRONG!

What are they there for, then? Still, you might be right. The end of month threads may be more meaningful.

If you compare IS versus Shutterstock on netcraft.com

I like that netcraft says IS is in the Netherlands.

For the 10'th time, please ignore those silly sites. They mean nothing what-so-ever.  Any attempt to conclude statistical data from such sites is bound to be WRONG!

If these sites were so irrelevant, why would Amazon buy Alexa?  I'll grant your point that the sample data may not be random enough, but it never will be.  What we see is that there is a large group of people whose behavior is shifting, whether or not they are representative of the whole sounds like it will be a IS vs. SS religious debate.

If these sites were so irrelevant, why would Amazon buy Alexa? 

Because it entertains! If it entertains then it may be a good investment. If it makes you visit the site and you want to believe the data then the chart business model is working!

Sorry michealo, that was meant to be a play on words, rather than a discussion of hosting infrastructure.

Perhaps the Alexa stats are in error.  However our own polls show iStock's earnings rating dropping rather precipitously.  It is 5.3 as of 3/7, which is as low as I have ever seen it.

Quote from: michealo on March 07, 2011, 11:54

Quote from: dgilder on March 07, 2011, 10:42

I like that netcraft says IS is in the Netherlands.

IS use Akamai to mirror their content and Akamai have a worldwide network of 73,000 edge servers to deploy content ...

When you access the site some or all off the content is served by Akamai from a server that is located near you (near meaning with low likelihood of latency) that is why you will see the locations varying from time to time
 

I'm not sure why the location of the servers should have anything to do with where it shows istock's location. It just proves how unreliable some of the things on the internet are.

Lot's of information on the internet is unreliable, however a tool reporting that a server is located in the Netherlands when it actually is isn't unreliable.