Is Alibaba going downhill?

Over the last year, traffic at Alibaba.com - the world's #1 B2B website - has been declining steadily. There has been a steady decline from a site rank in the top 20's last year, to a ranking below 100 now.

I'm not sure why that is. They may be advertising less. They may not be appearing in search engines as prominently as before. People may have tired of the site. Or there may be a number of other possible reasons.

However, it is approximately 1 year since Yahoo invested over $1 billion for a 30ish% stake in the Chinese trade giant. And, Yahoo can't be too pleased to see the numbers declining.

In the USA, over the last 6 months, Alibaba's traffic has fallen from about 130,000 daily visitors to about 80,000 per day (according to QuantCast.com).

Once again, there may be a number of reasons for the traffic decline. Of course, I would like to think that it is because more international importers and exporters - especially Americans - are using Importers.com. But, in fact, their loss has been far greater than our gain. So who knows?

For most B2B trade site managers, Alibaba has been the great star that has cast its shadow upon our growth and evolution. Are younger, more targeted trade sites finally catching the Chinese dragon? We'll have to wait and see.

Still, for all those companies in China that pay over USD $5000 per year to be listed in Alibaba's Gold Supplier directory, the loss of American traffic (i.e. - BUYERS) cannot be good news!

Here is the link to the copied article from importers.com


http://www.importers.com/tradeblog/index.php?/archives/10018-Is-Alibaba-going-downhill.html

Replying to [GREG12750]:

Thanks for the info.....I am moving to importer.com....

Replying to [GREG12750]:

Read that article at Importers.com.

Found at on their website too how they verify members, including free members. There are some ideas that Alibaba could pick up from.

macs2005