Metrics Throwdown Part 3: Quark Base

This is part three of a three post series on free metrics data. In case you missed earlier parts, here's Part 1 and Part 2.

Previously on Appify, I covered Compete.com, and stated that it was top-notch when it comes to providing traffic data. In today's post, I'll cover a relatively new contender to the mix: Quark Base (results for Viddler here). Quark Base covers a lot of ground at first glance, and provides information that you really don't get at Compete or Quantcast.

When you search for a URL, it dynamically pulls the most recent data regarding your entry. I tried a few domains and Quark Base had to pull almost all of the data for that site because no one had searched them before.

A typical search returns a tremendous amount of data about the actual site. You get a screen shot of the landing page, an introduction area, social popularity, traffic, names and positions of the top people at the company, blog posts, and technical information on the site. The introduction section contains a description of the site, domain information, related sites, and a few extras. Social popularity displays how many delicious bookmarks, diggs, articles on reddit, popular pages within the site (for yesterday and all time), as well as top feeds.

The traffic data section, in my opinion, is where Quark Base hiccups a bit. They pull in Alexa graphs onto their site, and we all know how I feel about Alexa. I wonder why they don't pull from Compete.com? Or anything with hard numbers for that fact.

But, Quark Base redeems itself with its Spotlight section. If a blog post references the URL you searched for, Quark Base lists that post in this section. Part One of this series on Quantcast shows up in the Spotlight section when you search for Compete.com, so it's pretty sensitive to any new blog posts, which is killer for getting an up-to-date feel on what's going on in the blogosphere around a specific site.

The Company section is a great bonus feature that lists key people at the company, external profiles (ie. Wikipedia) and any job openings the company may have. However, the job listings are pulled from Indeed based on the company name, so for instance, if you're searching for Compete, any listing with "compete" in the title or description will be listed...which can be kind of deceiving, so I wouldn't rely on this data too much if you're job hunting.

And finally, the Technical section provides a detailed breakdown of technologies used on the site, such as the language and framework, what sort of server it's on, number of iFrames, and if there's flash elements within the site. Also in this section is hosting information like IP address, geographic location and nameservers.

So, how does Quark Base score:

Traffic Data	4
Demographics Data	1
Social and Blog Data	10
Bonus Features	10
Overall	6.25

Honestly, I wish this score was higher. It should be an 8 or a 9 because this site kicks so much metrics-ass. But, truth is that the site doesn't offer any sort of demographics data, and the traffic data is really sub-par.

Suggestions for the site to make this a 10 would be: 1). pull traffic data from Compete and 2). pull demographics data from Quantcast. These two things would make Quark Base your one-stop-shop for competitive metrics.

What do you think about Quark Base?

Stay tuned via the Appify RSS for the thrilling wrap-up on this series.