Usage and Rankings

Usage

TFAO's website is among the world's most visited sites devoted to American art.

For TFAO selected usage statistics totals please click here. Most sessions relate to Resource Library content.

Use of tfaoi.org and tfaoi.com

TFAO, which is a non-profit organization, acquired the contents of the tfaoi.com website in 2003 from a for-profit company. See the Resource Library Overview page for more information. In order to preserve the links and browser "bookmarks" and "favorites" that had accumulated since the 1996 initiation of the tfaoi.com website, TFAO preserved the tfaoi.com domain for continuity. TFAO's hosting firm made the new .org domain reside under the old .com domain to provide the desired results.

Rankings

When seeking the ranking of TFAO's website, if you enter tfaoi.org you may obtain a lesser ranking than when entering tfaoi.com which generally yields a better ranking. "Advanced searches" using search engines operate under the same hierarchical principle. When you search under the tfaoi.com domain in Google you will retrieve many relevant TFAO pages. When you conduct the identical search with the tfaoi.org domain you will retrieve a different number of pages.

The monthly rankings of TFAO's website vary considerably throughout the year in a predictable pattern. Monthly variances are strongly influenced by seasonal student research activity at educational institutions worldwide.

For Ranking.com's April, 2008, rankings for online popularity of the world's top million most visited websites, tfaoi.com ranked within the top 7% of monthly Web traffic with a rank of 70,678. In July, 2009 Ranking.com counted 17,615 links pointing to tfaoi.com with a rank of 45,282 (top 4%); Tfaoi.org had no information about links pointing to it and had a separate rating of 436,854.

Ranking.com's April, 2008 rankings for other selected websites specializing in American art:

• Addison Gallery of American Art <www.andover.edu/addison/home.htm> = not ranked
• Biggs Museum of American Art <www.biggsmuseum.org> = not ranked
• Butler Institute of American Art <www.butlerart.com> = 768,132
• Cahoon Museum of American Art <www.cahoonmuseum.org> = not ranked
• Georgia O'Keeffe Museum <okeeffemuseum.org> = 358,793
• Hunter Museum of American Art <www.huntermuseum.org> = not ranked
• Midwest Museum of American Art <midwestmuseum.us/> = not ranked
• Minnesota Museum of American Art <www.mmaa.org> = not ranked
• New Britain Museum of American Art <www.nbmaa.org> = 775,829
• Norman Rockwell Museum <nrm.org> = 125,173
• Ogunquit Museum of American Art <www.ogunquitmuseum.org> = not ranked
• Smithsonian American Art Museum <www.AmericanArt.si.edu> = not separately ranked, however entire Smithsonian Institution <si.edu> ranked 5,055
• Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art <www.aaa.si.edu> = not separately ranked, however entire Smithsonian Institution <si.edu> ranked 5,055
• Westmoreland Museum of American Art <www.wmuseumaa.org> = not ranked
• Whitney Museum of American Art <www.whitney.org> = 301,935

The monthly rankings of art museums change usually in patterns different than the pattern of TFAO's website. TFAO's rankings peak during Fall and Spring months while rankings of museums often peak in Summer months.

In March, 2008 Netcraft.com reported 162,662,052 responding web sites in a global web server survey. Based on this information, TFAO ranked in the top 1% of all visited web sites. TFAO's global web site visitation ranking from Alexa.com for May, 2008 was 128,119

Because of the way ranking organizations collect data, they may not properly add tfaoi.com and tfaoi.org data for composite results.

Geographic location of visitors

For May, 2008 Alexa.com reported 64.3% of visits to TFAO's website were from the United States.

From other countries:

• United Kingdom 6.9%
• Germany 2.9%
• Canada 2.3%
• India 2.3%
• Iran 1.3%
• France1.0%
• Mexico1.0%
• Australia 0.9%
• Netherlands 0.8%
• Egypt 0.6%
• Russia 0.6%
• Indonesia 0.6%
• Brazil 0.5%
• Spain 0.4%
• Poland 0.4%
• Other countries13.0%

Return to Readership information

Notes

Occasionally people ask how we market TFAO and Resource Library, including whether we conduct market research?  TFAO relies on word of mouth and incoming links. We welcome volunteers for marketing at our promotion volunteerism page.

Advanced market research:

Incoming traffic: TFAO does not measure inbound traffic from individual IP addresses, domains or websites. TFAO is sending information to hundreds of thousands of users per month. The composition of such a wide spectrum of users is too complex for in-depth analysis by TFAO.

Outbound traffic: Some TFAO pages contain many links to Web pages outside of TFAO's digital library. Many people link from TFAO pages to other sites from institutional computers serving multiple people (e.g. college and other libraries) rather than personal computers. We know of no way to accurately determine how many people use jointly shared computers. We suspect that since TFAO has a digital library, the library to library traffic is substantial. Since people use TFAO primarily as a content library and not a source of links, they may read TFAO content one day and later on go to another content source's site or physical location without linking from the TFAO site. TFAO refers readers to outside content source homepages through multiple pages in the TFAO site, sometimes dozens of pages. TFAO also provides direct links to individual pages in a content source's site. For an estimate of the quantity of text and images in TFAO's website please see Content and paper-printed book equivalence.

Google Analytics and other research services could be of use to TFAO content sources in measuring traffic from TFAO to their sites. Sources need to determine whether Analytics or other services track traffic from a URL (a single TFAO Web page), a domain (tfaoi.com and/or tfaoi.org), or a computer/network (IP address).

Go to

• Digital libraries
• Digitizing initiatives
• TFAO digital library overview
• Acquisition and deselection of content
• Content retrieval
• Usage
• Web connectivity
• Durability and protection of content
• Open access
• eBooks and public libraries
• A vision of the future for digital libraries
• A vision of the future for TFAO
  

Individual pages in this study will be amended as TFAO adds content, corrects errors and reorganizes sections for improved readability. Refreshing or reloading pages enables readers to view the latest updates. Links to sources of information outside of our web site are provided only as referrals for your further consideration. Please use due diligence in judging the quality of information contained in these and all other Web sites and in employing referenced consultants or vendors. Information from linked sources may be inaccurate or out of date. Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc neither recommends or endorses these referenced organizations. Although Traditional Fine Art Organization, Inc. includes links to other web sites, it takes no responsibility for the content or information contained on those other sites, nor exerts any editorial or other control over those other sites. For more information on evaluating web pages see Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc.'s General Resources section in Online Resources for Collectors and Students of Art History.

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