Swellnet vs Coastalwatch

Posted by Streetdaddy™ on June 26th, 2008 filed in Surf

One of my work buddies sent me a link to the recently released (?) Google Trends web application.  I was comparing a few different sites and decided to put the two Australian surf report juggernauts, Swellnet and Coastalwatch, head-to-head.  I was expecting a reasonably close race, but oh how wrong I was!  Yes, the site footer does claim that Google Trends provides insights into broad search patterns. Please keep in mind that several approximations are used when computing these results, but Swellnet definitely seems to have the upper hand for unique visitors.

So, which reporting site do use the most, and why?  Post a comment!

Swellnet is light on content, but fast-loading and makes it simple to get to what most watermen want: quality daily surf reports and long-term forecasts.

Coastalwatch has a lot more content and interactivity and a lot more streaming surfcams, but perhaps all of this is making it hard for users to get to what they really want?  Recent addition of Prototype-driven UI enhancements could explain why they’re so far behind?


4 Responses to “Swellnet vs Coastalwatch”

Both of these sites pay to be measured and ranked by Nielsen Netratings using embedded tracking code – much more accurate than the extrapolated Google values which from this post look completely wrong.

The sites are close: Coastalwatch is slightly ahead in daily UBs, well ahead in monthly UBs, they have similar page views but Coastalwatch users spend 2-3 times as long on each page as on Swellnet, and twice as long on the site.

Sports tracker spoke on June 27th, 2008 at 10:50 am

I was pretty sure the result would be about as reliable as surfer… Thanks for letting me know how far off the mark it really is. The word ‘experimental’ doesn’t seem to cover the true inaccuracy. Organic traffic wouldn’t make up much of the total for those sites, so will it ever be accurate?

Streetdaddyâ„¢ spoke on June 29th, 2008 at 4:22 pm

Both of these sites are great ah technolgy what did we ever do with out it ??????. May be read weather charts &
the like !!! Na seriously its so great to have sites like these at our finger tips. !!!!!!
It makes planing for a days surfing or a surf trip up or down our coast a much less hit or miss affair.
specially with our ever increasing fuel prices !!!!!!!!
Cheers…..

Dave wilson spoke on July 28th, 2008 at 9:01 am

i think CW is the best because all you really need to know is swell size/direction, wind speed/direction and a rough rise or fall trend for swell size, then check out the best banks on a cam so it has every thing you need, you can figger the rest out unless your a complete wannabe!

paul spoke on September 12th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

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