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How to Interpret a Top Download List on Your Favorite Download Sites
Index:
I. From a Beginner's Perspective: Problems Finding the Best Free Software
II. Turning to CNET Advice
III. The Dreaded Top Downloads List, a Sucker's Paradise!
IV. How to Win the Top Download Charts!
I. From a Beginner's Perspective: Problems Finding the Best Free Software
It's difficult to navigate the world of freeware. Take computer security as a prime example. How do you judge the best free antivirus software?
Put your self in the mind set of someone who has zero knowledge of Gizmo's Freeware reviews, AV-Comparatives, or other security methods such as sandboxing or isolation (Gizmo's Guide to Securing Your PC or here).
From this perspective, you might rely on word of mouth or Google searches.
Using the latter case, I searched Google with a few common search terms, "antivirus free download" or "antivirus software" or "best free antivirus". All of them bring back AVG Free's website at the #1-2 spot in the search results. Avast is also high in the search results.
But some top contenders, Avira & MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials), are not high in the results and might get missed by a casual surfer.
The lucky surfers are those who find our site with the "best free antivirus" search term, but some will likely notice informative sites like About.com. But I had hit or miss results with the various About.com articles. One article read like a nerd's paradise (here) and one had a short comparative list of three popular contenders (here). The comparative article seemed better than just relying on the top products found in likely Google search results (AVG, that is), but it still doesn't mention MSE, which would be a good antivirus for average users.
PCmag.com (here) came up high with one of the search terms I tried. It lists many links to product reviews in its antivirus category. Users would then have to compare the products by prices, editor and reader ratings, and review comments. However, the free products get lost in a crowd of pricey alternatives and it's difficult to determine which products to try. I would probably sort the list by "Editors' Choice", which brings Panda Cloud Antivirus to the top and no other free products.
Another high search result was a Geek.com forum thread (here) with 160+ posts (starting in 2007). The comments suggest the same top products that I found at About.com, but it also had several other suggested products here and there (including MSE) if you search through the whole forum.
So it's sort of comical that a simple forum thread wins in comprehensiveness over the highest products found in Google's results, About.com, and PCMag!
But our site, TechSupportAlert (Best Free Antivirus), clearly stands out of the crowd (no wonder it's growing so fast!). It nicely combines an editorial/comparison review (with more guiding advice than any other article I found), forum-type comments at the end, and many links to related security articles.
II. Turning to CNET Advice
Another popular Google search result for freeware products is CNET (aka, "Download.com"). It has many features to guide visitors, including product reviews (by editors and users), editor and user ratings, download statistics (by week and total), and a Security Starter Kit. Its list of the "Top freeware" (sic) sorts security products by popularity, which puts AVG at the top and contradicts the site's suggestions in its Security Starter Kit.
Prominent on CNET is its *Security Starter Kit with six categories of editor suggestions. The security setup would end up being
(1) Avira or Avast (resident AV);
(2) Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (on-demand scanner) or/and Threatfire (resident HIPS), but the comments leave it very unclear how users ought to interpret this category (do they get both products or just one of them?);
(3) Security add-ons for browsers: WOT, NoScript, AVG LinkScanner, and LastPass -- my notes here are that NoScript would be annoying for a newby and AVG LinkScanner doesn't add much protection over WOT, but the idea to emphasize WOT is excellent for prevention;
(4) Comodo Firewall or Online Armor (Firewall/HIPS combo);
(5-6) TrueCrypt, Enigmail, Kidzui, etc. (Encryption and Parental Filters).
So we get something like Avast, Threatfire, Comodo, and browser add-ons for our resident protection recommendations. Threatfire and Comodo probably overlap too much in this configuration and would provide excessive HIPS protection considering Avast has a behavioral blocker too!
I suspect a beginner would have too many security apps and too many headaches after following the Security Starter Kit. They would have many popups from Comodo, most sites would suddenly stop working correctly with NoScript, and the double HIPS would eat away at system resources.
*Warning: Downloads from Cnet (Download.com) now require the use of a proprietary installer.
III. The Dreaded Top Downloads List, a Sucker's Paradise!
Some people go right to the most prominent feature of CNET: its list of the most popular downloads. The list has the advantage of collecting many of the big names in freeware and it lets you see what other users are downloading.
But the top product is AVG's free antivirus, which doesn't do nearly as well as its competition in respected online tests, and some very high quality products are mysteriously missing or low. You can't find Open Office, KM Player, or CCleaner very high at all.
The secret to interpreting these most popular downloads lists is to keep in mind that vendor's can re-direct users to their preferred partner download site. So a site that comes up high in search engine results (like AVG Free), gets a head start when it redirects its visitors to CNET (or some other download site) for downloads.
Good tip: Check the download page of any suspicious product you see on a top downloads list. See if it might be on that list for more reason than its great programming prowess!
Don't be too idealistic and mistakenly assume that top download lists accurately measure popularity. They are biased to the core and a sucker's paradise!
They measure other things too: the popularity of a product in search engines, the choice of a product vendor to redirect users to a given download site (you go to AVG to download a product, and you end up at CNET to get the download!), the frequency of new updates to a product (the more they update, the more we have to download!), advertising, and word of mouth rumor spreading in which many people just tell their friends to go get AVG Free (with no other options).
AVG Free is the most successful and it uses the tactic above by providing a major download link to CNET. It also has several smaller alternate links to download from its own site, but they are down out of the way.
Avira gives center stage to CNET and then sometimes lesser props to MajorGeeks and Softpedia. This is probably an error; they should not spread the wealth to three well known sites. And perhaps it is a bigger mistake to place the alternate download links directly below the recommended download, which gives them too much weight and suggests a decision to the visitor: "you may pick this download link, that download link, or maybe this other one." No, you want the visitor to just click "download" and never notice that any alternatives exist!
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (MBAM) seems successful by pretending that CNET is a natural extension of their own site. When you click "Download free version," you go directly to CNET. However, MBAM gets a negative blotch for labeling its free version a "trial version" (in the mouse-hover popup text), usually meaning that it will only work for a limited period of time (it's actually just a stripped down free version of their full pay version). This might scare away a few potential downloaders, which may be good for their pay version but not so good for the top download charts.
It's interesting that SUPERantispyware (SAS) doesn't redirect at all like everyone else does. SAS lags on most Top Download lists. Big mistake!
CCleaner is almost always #1 on Filehippo and rarely #1 on any other site I can find.
Since SAS and CCleaner would probably be higher on the charts, they distort the Top Download lists on all sites. The fatal flaw is that some sites do not direct their downloads to download sites at all, or they direct their downloads to some particular site. If a product chooses 1 download site to redirect its downloads, then it steals potential downloads away from other sites. So all top download lists are somewhat unreliable as a measure of what they say they measure.
Don't be misled by all the hype. All the fancy statistics don't override common sense! Download sites tend to feature most popular lists because such lists tend to grab the attention of users and they are just plain interesting. But they have glaring flaws: they don't always list the best products as the highest and they are easy to manipulate.
Here is a list of some of the most fancy, appealing, and statistically high top download lists:
Download.com/CNET: Its #1 has over two million weekly downloads. It has by far the best information setup: includes user ratings, editor's ratings, total number of downloads by previous week, total number of weeks on the Top 50 chart, total number of downloads, and date added for the newest product version. And if you click you get a publisher description, user reviews, an editor's review sometimes, etc.;
Softpedia.com: Its #1-2 have just over a hundred thousand weekly downloads. Includes user ratings and if you click, it has user reviews, editor reviews, product descriptions, total downloads, etc.;
MajorGeeks.com: Its #1 has just over a hundred thousand weekly downloads. Includes user ratings, but you must click first to view them. It has editor picks, but they scattered everywhere across the site. And it has a list of Top Freeware Picks nearby, but it does not match the editor picks exactly.
IV. How to Win the Top Download Charts!
Well it's the winner, it's at the top of the top downloads, and there is no way that that many people could be wrong. Or could they!
Want to know how to help your free software reach the top of the charts? Do you want it to be in the top 20 of the Top Downloads on some popular download site like CNET?
Simple: Place a download link from your site to theirs, divert all your downloads to them, advertise it as the "Recommended Download" (even if it seems to suggest that the preferred download site is "better" than its closest rivals), advertise the download site with a pretty logo or a big bold link with bold borders, and advertise on their download site!
Or you could pick the quiet, sneaky approach like Malwarebytes Anti-Malware successfully does by pretending that your preferred download site is just an extension of your own website for all "in-house" downloads. The visitor clicks on an ordinary "download here" link and suddenly they get a download from CNET!
The trade off is that if you want to get high on a download list, you have to pick only one or two partner download sites. If you try to spread the wealth, then you might spread it too thin and end up low on all the lists. So only pick one main site to redirect your downloads (probably CNET/Download.com), and maybe avoid Avira's possible error of linking to three well known sites.
Oh and I almost forgot: if you create several new versions of your software and make it somewhat difficult to just click "update" from within the program, then users will have to download more often!
Send them to your site, them redirect them to the appropriate target download site!
But if you do this too often and you have stiff competition, then users may switch over to the competition. Aristotle's "golden mean," which places the virtues as a mean between extremes, is a good rule to follow.
Now of course this is a bit sarcastic and it is not a charge against any products, and they wouldn't go to the top without also having some high quality features or usefulness but it is still fun to see who tries to "cheat" the charts!
What are you waiting for? All the other kids are doing it! And they are.
Related List:
Best Windows Freeware/Shareware Download Sites
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Comments
A bit of a correction needs added to your post. Avast has a fairly new behavior blocker that is not yet refined to be considered top of the line. But knowing Avast is a quality product, their behavior blocker will come around eventually. A behavior blocker is different than a HIPS program. And Threatfire has been pretty much abandoned by PC Tools ever since the Symantec acquisition. Why Comodo's HIPS is not recommended on this site is a mystery I suppose.
Besides that, though, I think the definition of "freeware" has changed considerably over the past few years. There is currently a small population of true freeware available outside open source programs. The majority of freeware these days incorporates programs which are adware, toolbar or spam email supported or some combination of the three, including those with pop up alerts that advertise upgrades to a paid version. Most of the "freeware" programs on this site, especially the security or multi-media related fall into the category of adware, toolbar and/or spam email supported programs. Added to the mix is now the download wrappers of sites like CNET. And there is a current trend to have people get freeware programs by adding some app on Facebook which can monitor personal information, email addresses and information of friends lists on Facebook. There is also the current issue of programs like Auslogics or Uniblue which scan a computer and then gives questionable information about a system's health- recommending that an upgrade to a paid program is something that needs done immediately. Maybe all that is just a sign of the times. But however it is defined, freeware certainly is not what it used to be for the most part.
What adds to the problem is that there are recommendations to "just opt out of the toolbar" or to give a "temp. email address", etc. The issue with this advice is that whenever the program in question updates it can usually add a toolbar or collect other information about the user as part of the update process.
I think it is not good advice to recommend programs made by Auslogics, WinX, SoThink, Wondershare, Iobit, Uniblue and others. These companies are inherently not trustworthy. Yet I see on this site recommendations to use some of those programs- even as top picks in a category. For this reason I choose to use Softpedia as my download site of choice. The editor reviews are usually accurate and reviews by users are not edited out and deleted if they disagree with Softpedia. Programs are marked as adware supported, if need be. And I have reported spyware infested programs which Softpedia deleted from their site immediately upon their own confirmation. And I don't mean just the spyware infested program in question- but all the programs the vendor had on the Softpedia site. That's what I call responding to a problem. And it's something I doubt techsupportalert would ever have the wherewithal to do. Sorry, but that's also just a sign of the times. Maybe TSA should jump on board as well.
In recent times we've highlighted both the OpenCandy and Cnet wrapper issues.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/controversial-advertising-progra...
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/cnet-downloadcom-wrapped-install...
I personally, and others, have also spent a huge amount of time working through our reviews to remove Cnet downloads and replace them with links to Softpedia, MajorGeeks or FileHippo. We also try to advise wherever possible within our articles and reviews about the potential for other unwanted items. As you rightly point out though there is a limit to what we can achieve partly because the situation is so fluid regarding individual products and partly because we don't have paid staff to monitor this stuff.
We also rely on comments from our visitors to inform us about changes we should maybe be looking at. These are then assessed and actioned as necessary.
In terms of response, no one who contacts me waits longer than 8 hours for a reply, and that's seven days a week :) Mostly,I respond immediately unless I need to confer with Gizmo or one of the editors first. Anonymous comments are another matter because we get hundreds of spam, troll and other trash material which all has to be dealt with. Inevitably, given the nature of this task, anonymous comments take second place to registered or direct contacts and will take longer to process.
Ultimately though we can only go so far and it isn't a cop out to suggest that end users themselves should at least do some research about what they are about to install on their computer. In less time than it takes to check your Facebook page, a quick Google with a product name will highlight the majority of issues potential users may wish to be aware of.
I agree that Softpedia provides the most informative and easy to navigate system for identifying the existence of potentially unwanted components. Whenever a new link appears in our comments, Softpedia is the first place I go to to check it out.
Thank you for taking the time to post your comment. We are constantly looking at ways to improve our visitor experience and will always consider revisions to our existing procedures if they are within our means to achieve.
Very interesting!
I Honestly don't trust that download.com's downloads are correct.
First, if you truly look at the stats, often you will see (last week 0)when a product is 3rd this week thus telling you that the program miraculously jumped from the bottom of the list to the top in just a week. Second, is that download.com is extremely slow at updating the product versions on their site. CNET might be faster at getting new versions for the most downloaded products, but I know a game developer that asked them repeatedly to update a game from version 40.1 to 40.3 and it took them a few months before they finally added the updated version to their site. I usually end up going to other sites to download programs that take a week or two longer to reach download.com. Superantispyware often has this problem. From the time it is on superantispyware's website it's another week and a half before it appears on download.com. That might not seem a big gap for some of you, but I take my downloading seriously. I check for updates everyday using SUMO,Cleansoft, and filehippo update monitors. It really bugs me when I go to download.com to get an update, and then when I open the installer I find it's the version I already have. Now, I must pay closer attention to the version number on anything I download from download.com.
PS. You also have to be careful about anything downloaded from download.com because it's often riddled with spyware because CNET doesn't test any of the products on their site for malware and viruses. It's also filled with fake reviews(from the developer and paid employees)that give 5 star, love filled reviews for crappy products.
The last thing I have to say is about Version Tracker Pro
http://download.cnet.com/VersionTracker-Pro/3000-2094_4-10223175.html
Now clearly it is a top downloader with 13,962,481 downloads and a 13th spot in the top downloaded products, but this is simply because CNET advertises this crapware on their site. Just read the reviews and look at the rating.
1 star out of 495 votes.
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