
Stack Overflow just became a top-500 site. - db42
http://www.quantcast.com/p-c1rF4kxgLUzNc#
======
randlet
It's almost hard to believe we went so long without a site like StackOverflow.
Not surprising they've grown so fast considering how much better they are than
everyone else.

Congrats & thank you to Jeff & Joel & the rest of the SO team. You guys truly
make the Internet a better place for all programmers!

~~~
gaius
Yet ExpertSexChange is still near the top of Google search results - 'tis a
mystery. Still, it validates the SEO business model that gaming the algorithm
can get you higher ranked than real actual content of the kind SO has in
buckets.

~~~
ddemchuk
any experts exchange result has the actual responses down at the bottom of the
screen when you scroll down. They aren't "gaming" anything, the content is
plainly there, just far below the fold.

Your comment validates my belief that most people don't understand SEO and
think it's all evil

~~~
mustpax
By ensuring their landing pages are as unusable as possible Experts Exchange
is reducing the usefulness of search results. They are gaming the system to
the detriment of everyone else and this is a perfect example of "evil" SEO.

------
AlexC04
I really love SO. The thing that really got me started using it was the
article I read (on here) about a guy who got headhunted for a job interview at
Google off the back of his stack overflow score.

I thought - holy geez, I'd better get working then!

I've not actually been to quantcast before but it seems an interesting site. I
usually grab my rankings data from Compete and Alexa

Top 300 sites worldwide and US in Alexa
<http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stackoverflow.com#> Top 11,000 in Compete
(maybe it's a bit better if you have their PRO ranking)
<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/stackoverflow.com/>

Actually... Quantcast looks like it might be fundamentally different from
Alexa and Compete. I wonder how much it costs? Maybe I could use that to find
my audience.

One thing I found interestedin on quantcast the location dropdown and see how
the site ranks in other countries.

Out of interest, I pulled Canada and saw that we've got Stack ranked as 105
instead of 500 ... which must mean we're 5 times "techie-er" than the States.
BOO YAH! Then I switched to pulling the other dropdowns and realized we're
both getting our butts handed to us by the UK, Germany and India. Probably
just means all their OTHER sites suck eggs. :)

~~~
cletus
Heh that's pretty funny as I believe I'm that guy.

As a bit of a teaser I have a followup coming to that particular post.

Hint: I'm moving to New York. :)

------
nhebb
I've never looked at quantcast stats before. How accurate are their estimates
of age, income, kids? I ask because it says that 23% of Stack Overflow's
visitors are female, and that doesn't seem very accurate. _NB: This is based
solely on my recollection posters' avatars, which may be a bad measure, but
it's the only one I've got_.

~~~
ceejayoz
In my experience, women on the internet tend to be less likely to indicate
that in their profiles/avatars.

------
archgrove
It would be interesting to find out how many users they're getting from their
semi recently launched API (<http://stackapps.com>). I know my iPhone Stack
Exchange client <http://sixtoeightapp.com> has over a thousand downloads, and
won't be counted by Quantcast. Whilst it's more of a complementary access
point, other apps on Stack Apps might suffice as the sole access point for
passive users (i.e. those who just want answers, as the API is read only
currently).

~~~
gaius
Offtopic - how on Earth did Apple give you a 12+ rating for an app about
programming questions!? Another mystery.

~~~
archgrove
I chose it. Any app that downloads data from the web needs to be careful with
age ratings - Stack Exchange has more than programming questions - it has,
e.g. video games, with perhaps more age restricted material. I chose 12+ as a
compromise between Apple's desire to have age approprate labelling, and
restricting likely users.

------
theDoug
In under two years, no less! It shows what dedication, attention to the big
details, and a clear _goal_ can get you.

"So long hyphen site."

------
jasonkester
Think about the demographics of people who seek out and install the
Quantcast/Compete/Alexa toolbar. Now look at the demographics of their
respective Top N lists.

Now imagine a knitting community site that gets twice the traffic of
StackOverflow. Would it appear in the Quantcast/Compete/Alexa Top 500?

~~~
chrismiller
StackOverflow is a Quantcast Quantified site. This means it's traffic is
directly measured with a tracking pixel on each of Stackoverflow's pages.

~~~
chaosmachine
The problem is: Are all 499 sites above them measured the same way? And all
the ones below?

The answer is no, of course. Most sites don't run the QC tracking pixel. That
makes any ranking they give fairly questionable, in my mind.

~~~
citricsquid
case in point, we (<http://minecraftforum.net> & <http://minecraftwiki.net>)
have 60m page views per month (as Stackoverflow does -- according to Joel) and
we're nowhere near the top 500 according to QC.

~~~
df07
The ranking is based on visitors, not page views. Based on the graphs posted a
few weeks ago at <http://imgur.com/a/haHHz>, it looks like you have about 2.8
million unique visitors per month to SO's 8.6 million in Quantcast

~~~
citricsquid
This is uniques? Ah, that changes things then ha. Although none of those
graphs there list our uniques (I don't think? Don't match the figures I have
here and GA calls them "Uniques" explicitly, they're visitors in those graphs)
we are definitely lower than the 8m SO has.

I checked, the graphs you linked are visits. As of today our visits is at just
shy of 11,000,000.

Edit: Ah, you're right. I see, under "visitors". Yeah, that looks about right,
we have closer to 3m uniques. So many different terms in stats :D I wonder
what the value of uniques vs. page views is.

~~~
mrkurt
Uniques are what count for big ad campaigns. Well, mostly. Uniques get the
campaigns which you then have to fulfill with pageviews.

------
jarin
I guess that settles the debate about whether choice of language matters or
not :)

Although I can't imagine scaling has been fun (or cheap).

~~~
spolsky
Scaling has been cheap, and fun.

Read about our newest data center:
[http://blog.serverfault.com/post/1432571770/stack-
overflows-...](http://blog.serverfault.com/post/1432571770/stack-overflows-
new-york-data-center)

Read about our SQL Server hardware:
<http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/database-upgrade/>

~~~
carson
Are you factoring in the SQL Server licenses when you say it is cheap?

~~~
ergo98
Perhaps they're taking advantage of BizSpark or WebSpark or a similar
programs. If they aren't, the dual CPU machine they mention would require
$14,000 of SQL Server licenses (if you paid list).

EDIT: Actually there's a newer "Web Edition" targeted to roles like this that
halves the price. So $7,000 for that server (the details are sparse, but it
also sounds like you can opt into it for $15 / month / processor).

That's a lot to someone trying to shoehorn a startup, but is it really a lot
for real businesses?

On the server end they still have _tremendous_ headroom in the scaling up
department...and that's before the Westmere-EX drops and bumps the top up
quite a significant amount. You can add 1TB of memory, and four 8-core
processors, to commodity Dell servers. That's before you get into the serious
business.

~~~
daviding
Bizspark is a short-term program, where you invalidate yourself when you get
revenue. It's a good idea but I understand it only delays those looming SQL
Server per proc license costs.

While I congratulate Jeff and Joel I would like to see more numbers about the
'cheap and easy' claim if possible please?

------
cletus
Stackoverflow is an excellent medium for asking programming questions.

The thing I question is their VC-backed strategy to apply that to many other
fields. Sure it's early days yet but even the original "trilogy" sites haven't
come anywhere near SO's success.

I have this nasty feeling that SO won't be able to justify that investment and
thus turn from a successful small business to a failed venture.

On the plus side only one USV portfolio company (I forget the name) has ever
switched off the lights.

------
pierrefar
Is this directly due to them being featured on MSDN?

~~~
yatsyk
It seems that they have stable growth and there is no big increase in traffic
last time. So it looks unrelated.

------
edanm
I wonder what the numbers are for all the new sites, and whether they're
started gaining serious traction outside of the SO regulars.

------
jacquesm
Alexa has had them in the top 500 for a while:

<http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stackoverflow.com>

That's very impressive, I think that stackoverflow will see a major boost from
google groups shutting down too.

~~~
JeremyBanks
Google Group isn't shutting down. They're turning off files and pages, that's
all.

~~~
jacquesm
right:

[http://groups-announcements.blogspot.com/2010/09/notice-
abou...](http://groups-announcements.blogspot.com/2010/09/notice-about-pages-
and-files.html)

