(Above) Screen captures of the top 12 web sites with a Marina City connection. (Click on image to view larger version.)

September 11, 2009 – There was a 160 percent increase in traffic to Marina City Online over the past three months, according to the web analysis company Alexa. It was the biggest three-month increase of 19 web sites related to Marina City. Traffic was up at four other Marina City sites.

Still, MCO ranks sixth of the 19 sites and was beat by bin36.com and 10pinchicago.com, both of which have lost traffic since July.

skyscrapercity.com, operated by Marina City resident Jan Klerks, was up about five percent to continue its commanding lead. A distant second was hotelsaxchicago.com, up less than one percent. chicagocarless.com, a blog by Marina City resident Mike Doyle, was up 40 percent to show at number three.

amanochicago.com also saw more traffic, up 90 percent to finish ninth.

Marina Towers Condominium Association, which in late 2008 challenged a claim by MCO that it was “the official source of information about Marina City,” did not have enough traffic to its web site, mymtca.com, for it to be ranked by Alexa. landmarkmarinacitynow.org also fell below the minimum traffic level needed to be ranked.

In August, there were about 226 million web sites, according to the Internet services company Netcraft, so the first five sites ranked above are in the top one percent of the entire Internet. All of them, in fact, are in the top ten percent.

The above sites are operated by either a Marina City resident or a commercial tenant, or devote a significant portion of content to Marina City.

Draper & Kramer’s web site, dkcondo.com, had an Alexa rank of 2,051,507 – up 500 percent since July – but that is spread over 82 associations that it manages, including Marina Towers.

Alexa does not rank sub-domains, which excludes chicago.dickslastresort.com, chicago.transwestern.net, and marinawatchdog.blogspot.com.

Since January 1, 2009, MCO has received more than 37,000 unique visitors, according to Google Analytics. Traffic peaked in February and was in a gradual decline until July, when it started up again.

The top three sites on the web, according to Alexa, are google.com, facebook.com, and yahoo.com.