Seattle's top Web 2.0 companies (July 2007)

Building on past Web 2.0 lists, Sampa's Marcelo Calbucci has released his latest Seattle Startup Index for the month of July.

Calbucci now has 157 companies on the list, noting that startups such as Versionate, Down2Night, Wishpot and Ripl saw big gains in popularity.

Zillow has secured the top spot for the second month in a row, posting an Alexa rank of 1,927. (It held an Alexa rank of 1,755 at the end of June.) iLike, the Seattle online music service which ranked number one in May, was just behind Zillow at 1,973. Others in the top ten: 43 Things, Newsvine, BuddyTV, Wetpaint, Blue Dot, Jobster, PayScale and Redfin.

Of the top 10, only two companies -- Redfin and Wetpaint -- saw gains in their Alexa ranking during the month.

Does that have any significance?

In the top 25, Redmond's Twango saw a huge surge -- most likely due to its sale to Nokia -- as did Avvo -- whose controversial online attorney rating system continued to create buzz.

The list is compiled based on the company's ranking in Alexa, an Amazon.com property that tracks Internet usage from those who have installed its toolbar. It is a fun look at what companies are attracting attention, but as I have pointed out in the past it is far from the definitive source. (In fact, Calbucci writes in a post last month how people try to manipulate Alexa and he notes that there are an estimated two million users of Alexa and 598 million who don't use it.)

Anyway, here are the top 100 sites in the U.S. based on Alexa. Note that no Seattle startups come even close to breaking the top 100.

UPDATE: Taking the idea a step further, Justin Chan -- a developer at Avvo -- has written some code that compiles a daily update of the Alexa rankings for Seattle Web 2.0 companies.

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