Despite the effort and money pumped into the idea of creating web sites based on advertising and e-commerce these past few years, the web remains dominated by sites based on neither of these two things.
    And that doesn't appear at all ready to change.
    The sites that remain most visible--the best-known and easiest to find--are those either attached to institutions or those that host web sites for individuals or small businesses.
   According to the latest monthly tabulation by web measurement firm Word of Net, 24 of the web’s top 50 most visible sites—including 10 of the top 20—are either community sites or sites that are aligned with institutions.
    Word of Net has tracked the 50 most visible sites on the web since October. Visibility as defined by Word of Net has to do with how well a web site gets its name around the web through effective keywords, directory listings and links from other well-traveled web sites.
    Word of Net bases its concept of visibility on a study it commissioned last year from the University of Southern California which claimed that this sort of visibility drives 87 percent of all web traffic.
    "A high visibility score measures a likelihood that people will find your product or service," says Kelly Colbert, Word of Net’s vice president of marketing and sales.
    If this is so, the very sorts of web sites that desperately need high visibility scores are failing rather miserably.
    At the same time, web sites that don’t appear to require visibility to stay alive—university sites and government sites—seem to have the visibility thing mastered.
  Colbert admits Word of Net was a bit puzzled about this when they first starting running the data.
    "We found all these edus," she says. "From a business perspective, we wondered what this was all about.
   "But actually I think the edu sites present a wonderful success story for business sites," she says. "It’s very educational to look at these edu sites—no pun intended."
    The appearance of the likes of Harvard, Berkeley and Cornell on the list of the web’s top 50 most visible sites may seem accidental, having to do with the vast community these institutions connect online. But Colbert doesn’t think it’s quite so random.
    "In a way, they have a $100,000 product they’re selling," she says. "The Harvards and Cornells of the world have huge revenue targets to make. They have very effectively increased their reach on the internet, and have built their awareness online."
   She says it’s not just any universities that get into the top 50 list, but often those colleges that offer the most expensive educations. She believes these institutions have gotten very sophisticated in the art and craft of getting their names in front of prospective students—as well as prospective benefactors—online.
    Colbert believes commercial sites could learn a thing or two from the edus.
   "The interesting thing about visibility is that visibility can be actionable," she says. "You can influence visibility, by acting on where you stand in keywords, categories or third-party links. We do see movement from month to month."
   Citysearch.com is one site that made a big leap on the chart from December, moving up 20 slots to No. 29.
   "Obviously they’re aggressively using all of their online marketing vehicles to get in front of their audience," says Colbert.
    Visibility is still a new measure that may or may not completely relate to how the web feels to users. Word of Net does not factor advertising into its visibility index, ostensibly because other measurement services track advertising. But looking at the broader idea of how visible a web site may seem to surfers, one might reasonably argue that advertising affects visibility.
   Colbert acknowledges that Word of Net may yet mix web ads into the visibility formula in the future.

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