Top Sites by Caldwell.org is a free website that you can use to see site ranking after Alexa. Here it basically uses the data from Cisco Umbrella Popularity List which has about top 1 million domains. The data is updated daily and there is a search tool which you use to look up a specific domain. All the top websites here are shown as list and lookup hardly takes a second.
With that being said, this tool only ranks websites from 1 to 1,000,000 and that’s it. There are no other metrics or details are included. On the other hand, the list of websites that it pulls from Cisco Umbrella static storage is downloadable. You can download the CSV file and then use it in Excel to view the website ranks locally.
Cisco Umbrella Popularity List is basically a popularity list that contains most queried domains based on DNS usage across the Umbrella global network(OpenDNS, Phishtank, DNSStream, BGPStream, DNSCrypt). The network sees more than 100 Billion requests per day from around 165 countries. It works differently than Alexa as it takes into account the relative internet activity irrespective of the invocation protocols. While Alexa measures only browser based ‘HTTP’ requests from users.
Free Online Alternative to Alexa Website Ranking: Caldwell Top Sites
You can access Caldwell Top Sites here. The website has no sign up and registration and you can jump on the list of websites right away. All the domains that it lists are in order and on the main homepage, you can see the top ones as shown in the screenshot below.
Now, there is a search box that you can use. Just type the domain that you want to see ranking for, and then simply hit enter. It will take a couple of seconds and then it will show you your domain if it exists in the list along with the corresponding rank.
There is a filter that you can apply since the list kind of duplicates. I think it is the limitation of the algorithm behind the list that it counts “www.google.com” and “google.com” as separate entities. So, if you want the list to only yield a domain, then make sure that “Only Domains” button is pressed.
In this way, you can use this simple website to see the rank of the websites in the list that it prepares. I hope they increase the dataset in the coming updates and add some more features to it. For, now, you can just make use of the Top Sites tool and it will get you an insight about where your website stands in the top 1 million domains in the world.
Final thoughts:
If you are looking for an alternative to Alexa Website Ranking, then you are at the right place. Cisco Umbrella List seems a good initiative that might be good to have to keep track of a site’s ranking based on DNS requests. I do hope they include some more metrics in the common updates other than just rank. And I liked the fact that the database of all the 1 million domains is free to download.
