In the race to get the attention of photographers, photo-oriented websites are scrambling to please customers. The ranking service, Alexa.com, is an excellent tool that provides Web surfers with important ranking distinctions. We have compiled a broad list of photo-oriented websites ranked by Alexa.com. Most photo-oriented websites focus on equipment, film and digital processing, and/or general information (and not information for marketing your photos), and we've included just about every photo-oriented site we could find. (If you know of others, we would appreciate your feedback.)

You'll be able to call the sites up, to figure out what will work for you and what will not. We hope we have provided you with another tool for making important distinctions so that you can fine-tune your stock photo-marketing strategies.

Note: #1 is the highest rank, #1,000,000 is the lowest rank. Rankings are valid as of May 1st 2001. Note that some companies will operate several websites. These are indicated with parentheses. Rankings, of course, are "educated guesses" by the computer. Rankings usually measure a webpage's quality, based in part by the number of links pointing to a page. For example, if an online website about automobiles has a high page rank, you'll know that other people searching the web consider it a credible source worth linking to.

Rankings can fluctuate from week to week. If you are a photo site and receive more than 150,000 hits per month and we have left you out of this round-up, our apologies! Contact us (psi2@photosource.com) and we will make a correction. This list was made on May 1st 2001. We plan to publish this list annually. Your comments and suggestions would be appreciated.

[Note: #1 is the highest rank, #1,000,000 is the lowest. Rankings are valid as of May 1st, 2001. Note that some companies will operate several websites. These are indicated with parentheses.]

Want to see the listing in web format ? Click here.

Comments on this column? Send them to the editor.

Rohn Engh, Photosource International.