WebPublishing.me

Traffic is king online, and it’s only after we’ve analyzed that traffic that meaningful patterns start to emerge. I’ve spent the past three weeks looking at the Web’s most successful blogs (and some of its less successful blogs), to come up with this list of the Top 100 Blogs of All Time. Of course, some of it is subjective, but my single most important criteria for inclusion was a meaningful amount of traffic. I used Technorati‘s list of the Top 100 Blogs as a jumping off point. After all, a blog is meaningless without a community that reads and interacts with its content (and that’s precisely what Technorati is designed to measure). Other data comes from a variety of sources including Alexa.com, Quantcast.com, Statsaholic.com, Google Analytics, and the venerable Wikipedia.

1) Digg: 820,000 visitors per day; 24.6 million per month. A social blog, I hesitated to include Digg on the list, but it’s hard to deny that it is a blog and that its got millions of devoted readers. Users submit the stories (often tech- or humor-related) to the site, and they can then vote on the best of the best — and those are the ones that make it to the site’s homepage.
2) Political Ticker by CNN: 303,000 visitors per day; 9.1 million per month. The blog outlet for CNN television’s latest breaking political news.

3) The Huffington Post: 283,000 visitors per day; 8.5 million per month. A news blog that focuses on politics, the green movement, entertainment, media, business and living. To give you some idea of what that kind of traffic is worth, the Huffington Post recently raised $15 million from investors.

4) Gizmodo: 230,000 visitors per day; 6.9 million per month. A Gawker Media enterprise, Gizmodo is a gadgets and tech lifestyle blog. This isn’t a site run out of a basement, though. In all, Gawker employs more than 100 writers.

5) MacRumors: 210,000 visitors per day; 6.3 million per month. A rather stark and bland-looking site, MacRumor‘s traffic more than makes up for its inelegance. The site’s promise? All the latest news and rumors about Apple.

6) LifeHacker: 166,000 visitors per day; 5 million per month. A tech blog focused on finding ways for nerds to save time through optimum programming and other streamlining tricks for life.

7) Perez Hilton: 160,000 visitors per day; 4.8 million per month. A gossip blog featuring dirt on musicians, actors, and, well, anyone with any amount of fame whatsoever.

8) Kotaku: 113,000 visitors per day; 3.4 million per month. Another piece in the Gawker Media puzzle (think Gizmodo and Lifehacker), Kotaku is dedicated to gaming and gaming culture. The blog’s name stems from a Japanese word meaning “unhealthily obsessed.”

9) JustJared: 103,300 visitors per day; 3.1 million per month. A “trend-spotting, pop culture blog” (which means gossip blog), JustJared is another offering at the feet of the god ensconced in the Temple of Celebrity.

10) BoingBoing.net: 93,000 visitors per day; 2.8 million per month. Originally a zine, BoingBoing has turned into a group blog with five high-profile writers — including the rather ravishing Xeni Jardin.

11) TMZ: 86,000 visitors per day; 2.6 million per month. A gossip and news blog with heavy weight behind it: AOL and Telepictures Productions. The site centers around Hollywood news.

12) TechCrunch: 83,000 visitors per day; 2.5 million per month. A blog about the latest and great Web technology, gizmos and gadgets. In a former life, the site’s founder, Michael Arrington, sold Achex (now the backend for Western Union’s Web site) for $32 million. Techcrunch purportedly gets $12,000 per month for the image ads it sells on its site.

13) Jalopnik: 80,000 visitors per day; 2.4 million per month. A site that’s “obsessed with the cult of cars,” Jalopnik caters to a primarily single, Caucasian male audience (according to Quantcast stats). Posts range from a random guy in Florida getting 50 driving violations in one day to a man arrested for a blow-up doll orgy in his Lincoln Towncar.

14) Mashable: 80,000 visitors per day; 2.4 million per month. A tech blog dedicated predominantly to social networking sites. They’ve got lovely things like a job board, too.

15) Gawker: 76,000 visitors per day; 2.3 million per month. A site dedicated to Gotham gossip and news. Gawker eventually spawned Wonkette — the Washington, D.C., version of the blog — and Defamer in L.A.

16) The Consumerist: 73,000 visitors per day; 2.2 million per month. Their tagline says it all: “Shoppers Bite Back.” The Consumerist highlights “the persistent, shameless gaffes of modern consumerism – and the latest scams, rip-offs, hot deals and freebies.”

17) PopWatch: 66,600 visitors per day; 2 million per month. A gossip blog from Entertainment Weekly, PopWatch gets about a third of all the traffic that visits Entertainment Weekly’s site (a pretty impressive number, in fact). The blog focuses on hard hitting news — like the number of “F-bombs” Christian Bale dropped on the set of the new Terminator movie.

18) Fark: 63,000 visitors per day; 1.9 million per month. Similar in scope to Digg.com, Fark focuses less on tech and more on the odd things that humans do. It’s weird news at its best — from drunken pirates to a Corvette with 2,4000 hp.

19) Treehugger: 66,000 visitors per day; 2 million per month. A culture blog for green living and sustainability. The site’s grown to a full time staff of 10 and more than 50 writers.

20) I Can Has Cheezburger? 66,000 visitors per day; 2 million per month. A blog dedicated to cats who speak with a lisp. The comedy site was acquired by investors in September 2007 for $2 million.

21) Blog Makezine: 60,000 visitors per day; 1.8 million per month. A blog dedicated to art and DIY projects. What more could any self-respecting steampunkish hipster want?

22) Wired Blogs: 46,000 visitors per day; 1.4 million per month. A collection of blogs from the tech world’s iconic magazine, Wired. Blogs have individual focuses including privacy (Threat Level), the Silicon Valley Scene (Epicenter) and pop culture (The Underwire).

23) ABC Blogs: 40,000 visitors per day; 1.2 million per month. A breaking news blog from ABC’s Jake Tapper. Dubbed Political Punch, the focus is on politics and flash vids from ABC news.

24) CrunchGear: 36,600 visitors per day; 1.1 million per month. Part of Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch Network, CrunchGear is a full-fledged gadgets blog for geeks. The editor in chief is John Biggs, techie and author of Black Hat: Misfits, Criminals, and Scammers in the Internet Age.

25) Defamer: 33,300 visitors per day; 999,000 per month. One of the heavyweights in the gossip world, Defamer is to L.A. what Gawker is to Manhattan (namely, crude celeb news that’s somehow irresistable).

26) Engadget: 33,000 visitors per day; 1 million per month. Founded by Peter Rojas — a former editor at Gizmodo — the two sites are similar: all tech all the time.

27) Deadspin: 28,700 visitors per day; 863,000 per month. One of the few sports blogs listed in the Top 100 blogs of all time, Deadspin‘s part of the Gawker Media empire, and that’s means they’ve got a pocketbook behind their writers. Recent highlights? Michael Phelps hitting a bong.

28) ReadWriteWeb: 25,300 visitors per day; 760,000 per month. Founded by New Zealander, Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb is a blog dedicated to Web technology. RSS and email subscribers number more than 250,000.

29) Neatorama: 25,400 visitors per day; 764,000 per month. Neatorama is a geek culture blog with posts on everything from men who survive at sea in ice chests to flash mobs and decoder rings.

30) The Wall Street Journal Blogs: 25,000 visitors per day; 750,000 per month. A collection of blogs by the venerable financial newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. Topics range from the wallet, to Baghdad to managing your personal life.

31) ApartmentTherapy: 24,600 visitors per day; 740,000 per month. A sort-of feng shui site for design junkies, ApartmentTherapy aims to help you make your house more beautiful, healthy and organized.

32) VentureBeat: 23,800 visitors per day; 713,900 per month. Another offering from a journalist-turned-blogger. Matt Marshall was once a venture capital reporter for the San Jose Mercury News. Now, he does his own independent reporting on the industry via VentureBeat. Incidentally, he’s almost got as much traffic as his old paper did (the Mercury News averages 1 million visitors per month).

33) Talking Points Memo: 23,400 visitors per day; 702,000 per month. With a staff of two bloggers, Talking Points Memo is dedicated to political news. It was founded in November of 2000 by award-winning journalist, Josh Marshall.

34) SeekingAlpha: 22,600 visitors per day; 679,000 per month. A high-caliber investing blog, SeekingAlpha focuses on the stock market. It publishes new and submitted content from more than 175 sources every day.

35) Ars Technica: 22,500 visitors per day; 677,000 per month. A gaming, technology, science and computer site. High-end tech goodies have a prominent place on the site.

36) iLounge: 20,500 visitors per day; 616,000 per month. The site that’s “all things iPod, iPhone, iTunes and beyond, iLounge dovetails on the Apple-obsessed tsunami that’s been building steam since the release of the Macintosh 128K in 1983.

37) AutoBlog: 19,100 visitors per day; 573,000 per month. Cars news for car junkies, AutoBlog, is the Weblogs, Inc., offering for gents who know how to use a wrench. Breaking news on the latest and greatest in the car industry.

38) Joystiq: 18,000 visitors per day; 541,000 per month. The most popular of the gaming blogs developed by Weblogs, Inc., Joystiq was launched by Engadget founder, Peter Rojas. It’s now Destination No. 1 for gaming addicts.

39) BloggingStocks: 17,500 visitors per day; 527,000 per month. A member of the Weblogs, Inc., network (think AOL and Joystiq.com), BloggingStocks features exclusive posts from finance guru Jim Cramer and more than 20 other bloggers.

40) DailyKos: 16,700 visitors per day; 501,000 per month. A political blog and gathering place for grassroots activists.

41) Celebrity Babies: 16,200 visitors per day; 487,000 per month. One of those rare sites that does exactly what it’s name says: Celebrity-Babies.com, dishes news on the children of celebrities — both in and out of the womb. It’s offered in partnership with CNN.

42) Michelle Malkin: 15,800 visitors per day; 474,000 per month. A blog from the syndicated columnist and Fox News Channel contributor, Michelle Malkin. It’s Dem-bashing at its best.

43) ThinkProgress.org: 15,400 visitors per day; 463,000 per month. A blog by Faiz Shakir of The Center for American Progress, the site is a nonpartisan political blog that aims to promote “progressive” ideas.

44) GigaOM: 15,300 visitors per day; 460,400 per month. Technology news, games and analysis. The emphasis here is on Web 2.0 and the writing comes from a corps of trained journalists.

45) Slashfilm: 15,130 visitors per day; 454,000 per month. An alternative film site, Slashfilm offers a breath of fresh air as opposed to the conglomerated film sites (which often read like adverts). Tagline? Blogging the reel world.

46) The New York Times’ Caucus Blog: 15,000 visitors per day; 452,000 per month. The New York Times Politics Blog covers politics in Washington, D.C., New York, and across the country.

47) Yanko Design: 14,900 visitors per day; 448,000 per month. Dedicated to “modern industrial design” news, Yanko is run by modern designers with a passion for architecture, design, technology and fashion.

48) Gothamist.com: 14,400 visitors per day; 434,000 per month. A culture blog devoted to NYC and its satellite cities, Gothamist has been churning out posts since 2003. It’s where the hip go to find hip things to do.

49) NewsBusters.org: 13,900 visitors per day; 417,000 per month. NewsBusters is devoted to “exposing liberal media bias” by ridiculing headlines and news stories produced by news organizations around the world.

50) Hot Air: 13,800 visitors per day; 415,000 per month. A video blog by conservative’s leading lady, Michelle Malkin. In her words, most of the Internet is populated with info from liberals for liberals.

51) ZenHabits.net: 13,100 visitors per day; 395,000 per month. A self-help site for the Zen-minded, ZenHabits is one of the few basement blogs to crack the Top 100. Leo Babauta posts on things like eliminating debt, getting better abs, and how to find relevancy in the writings of Aristotle. And he does it all from Guam (where he’s also father to six kids).

52) Spinner: 10,800 visitors per day; 326,000 per month. A mainstream music-blog from AOL, Spinner posts on everything from Buddy Holly to Pearl Jam. They also offer free MP3s (which, by the way, is an excellent way to generate traffic).

53) Cinematical: 10,300 visitors per day; 310,000 per month. Another offering from Weblogs, Inc. (the folks behind Bloggingstocks.com and Joystiq.com, among others), Cinematical is dedicated to films from steampunk to mainstream.

54) Neowin.net: 10,200 visitors per day; 307,000 per month. The tagline at Neowin is catchy (even if I’m not quite sure what it means): “Where unprofessional journalism looks better.” Yet another high-wattage tech- and tech-culture blog.

55) Power Line: 10,000 visitors per day; 300,000 per month. A law and politics blog run by fairly conservative Ivy League lawyers, PowerLine is a great example of a blog serving a neglected niche: intellectual ruminations on things like Hamas rallies in the U.S. How do lawyers feel about that? Read on to find out.

56) TV Squad: 8,900 visitors per day; 269,000 per month. A Weblogs, Inc., blog that uses the Internet to focus on TV. Episodes reviews are among the most popular features on the blog.

57) PostSecret: 8,300 visitors per day; 250,000 per month. A “community mail” blog, founder Frank Warren posts “secrets” that readers send to him anonymously on postcards. Now available in lovely book form.

58) The Pioneer Woman: 8,100 visitors per day; 245,000 per month. A down-home blog from the wife of “rugged cowboy” and mother of four, Ree Drummond. Drummond blogs about her horses, family and experiences on the range.

59) Search Engine Land: 8,050 visitors per day; 242,000 per month. Led by former BBC reporter, Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land is the search engine industry’s most widely read blog. Topics include privacy, SEO, monetization and breaking news.

60) Crooks and Liars: 7,300 visitors per day; 220,000 per month. A political blog that aims to its finger at corruption and bizarre political news, Crooks and Liars is run by liberal “muckraker” John Amato.

61) DumbLittleMan: 7,130 visitors per day; 214,000 per month. A self-help site by a “dumb little man” who harbors no pretensions of being a self-help guru, DumbLittleMan has become a hub for creative ideas that help make your quality of life better. Readers submit tips on things like “How to Have a Frugal and Happy Valentine’s Day.”

62) Problogger.net: 7,100 visitors per day; 213,000 per month. Darren Rowse’s popular blog on making money — a site that’s been live since 2002. Rowse is big enough now to have his own book.

63) DownloadSquad: 6,800 visitors per day; 206,000 per month. The Weblogs, Inc., forays into tech blogging with DownloadSquad. In all, nine bloggers regularly update the site.

64) SmashingMagazine.com: 6,500 visitors per day; 196,000 per month. A web magazine dedicated to making life easier for web heads (i.e. they release nifty public domain goodies like icons).

65) Pajamas Media: 6,300 visitors per day; 190,000 per month. Started as an affiliation of 90 of the “most influential weblogs” on the Web, Pajamas Media is on its way to become a full-fledged news force. In fact, they’re now reporting news from 40 countries around the world.

66) Dooce: 5,900 visitors per day; 179,000 per month. A former Web designer-turned-stay-at-home-mom, Heather B. Armstrong, has used her knowledge to turn her personal life into a stomping ground for other stay-at-home moms across the country.

67) EngadgetMobile: 5,600 visitors per day; 168,000 per month. A temple to mobile computing, EngadgetMobile publishes all the latest dirt on cellphone industry. It’s kind of hard to believe that it’s possible to publish 15 or more blog postings on cellphones everyday … but they do it.

68) Seth Godin’s Blog: 5,500 visitors per day; 168,000 per month. The personal blog of marketing genius and author of “Unleashing the Idea Virus,” Seth Godin.

69) PaidContent: 5,500 visitors per day; 165,000 per month. PaidContent covers the “economic evolution of digital content that is shaping the future of the media, information and entertainment industries.” Everything will be digital in the future, they say, and they plan to be there to cover it.

70) Luxist: 5,400 visitors per day; 162,000 per month. A blog for the rich, Luxist covers everything from brand-new BMW boats to Moet and Chandon champagne. It’s capitalism at its best.

71) Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish: 5,300 visitors per day; 161,000 per month. Formerly, Andrewsullivan.com, Sullivan’s conservative political blog grew so popular it’s now published by The Atlantic Online. He’s also the author of “The Conservative Soul.”

72) Slashfood: 5,100 visitors per day; 153,700 per month. Foodies’ Central, Slashfood caters to eaters with distinctive palettes the world around. It’s owned by blogging’s King Conglomerate, Weblogs, Inc.

73) The Unofficial Apple Weblog: 5,000 visitors per day; 151,000 per month. Tips analysis and news on Apple from the crew at Weblogs, Inc. (the people behind gaming site Joystiq.com and Bloggingstocks.com).

74) Gadling: 4,800 visitors per day; 145,000 per month. Another offering from Weblogs, Inc., (the people behind Joystiq.com, Bloggingstocks.com and Engadget.com), Gadling is designed for travel junkies. Offerings include “Photo of the Day,” photo galleries, and general travel news.

75) How to Change the World: 4,600 visitors per day; 138,000 per month. “A practical blog for impractical people,” Guy Kawasaki’s blog, “How to Change the World”, offers posts about his personal life and various business-related ideas he comes across.

76) Scobleizer: 4,300 visitors per day; 129,000 per month. Robert Scobleizer’s tenure at Microsoft as a “tech evangelist” would eventually give him enough street cred to start his own online projects, including his tech blog Scobleizer.

77) Valleywag.com: 3,600 visitors per day; 110,000 per month. A Gawker Media blog, Valleywag dishes dirt on the Silicon Valley seven days a week. It’s anything but afraid of establishment.

78) The Google Blog: 3,300 visitors per day; 101,000 per month. The official Google blog with the latest news and info from the Web’s father.

79) Kottke.org: 3,300 visitors per day; 98,800 per month. A physicist-turned-web designer, Jason Kottke is now editor in chief of his “liberal arts” blog, Kottke.org. A recent visit uncovered a photo of a man walking a wire strung between two buildings as blog posting No. 1.

80) Stereogum: 2,740 visitors per day; 82,300 per month. The indie answer to Rolling Stone, Stereogum focuses on emerging and underground artists (and they’re often responsible for making or breaking new acts). Reviews, news and MP3s — what else does an earbud punk need?

81) Freakonomics: 2,350 visitors per day; 70,750 per month. A rather personal offering from the authors behind the book, Freakonomics, the blog is hosted by the New York Times. You’d think the authors would talk about numbers and the economy, but they seem to blog about whatever ridiculous thing pops into their heads. Somehow, it feels like they were forced to start the blog by their editors at the newspaper, but I guess you can’t argue with 70K visitors per month.

82) ColbertNation: 2,300 visitors per day; 69,500 per month. Stephen Colbert’s blog is more of a Web site, but they do post clips from the show and other “breaking news.” A good respite from stodgy established media outlets.

83) Google Operating System: 2,100 visitors per day; 63,300 per month. An unofficial Google blog hosted on Google’s own Blogspot servers, the site “watches Google’s latest attempts to move your operating system online.” Filled with often-obscure posts on Google’s latest technological advances, it’s a techie’s wet dream.

84) Romenesko: 2,000 visitors per day; 60,000 per month (estimated). A powerful journalism blog published under the umbrella of the prestigious Poynter Institue, Romenesko is a gathering place for old and new media wonks. Traffic estimates come from a site FAQ which states that the blog accounts for more than 50% of the traffic at Poynter.org.

85) The Corner on National Review: 1,830 visitors per day; 54,900 per month. Offerings from the bloggers at the National Review Online. A mecca for conservative/Republican news.

86) MarginalRevolution: 1,640 visitors per day; 49,300 per month. A blog run by an associate economics professor is odd pick to be one of Technorati’s Top 100 blogs, but it’s one of the few sites out there that intends to make you think. Marginal Revolution‘s tagline: “Small steps toward a much better world.”

87) Blogoscoped: 1,400 visitors per day; 44,000 per month. An independent blog about the world’s biggest search engine, Google. They cover everything from malformed search results to Google’s parties.

88) BattelleMedia: 1,230 visitors per day; 37,000 per month. Dedicated to the search industry, John Battelle posts regularly on the latest developments at Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Best of all are his insights behind why the companies are doing what they’re doing.

89) Global Voices Online: 1,130 visitors per day; 33,900 per month. With Harvard University’s backing, GlobalVoicesOnline.org seeks to be the No. 1 outlet for the developing world. It’s the fruit of labor from some 150 volunteers, authors and translators who deliver news you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else.

90) Arts and Letters Daily: 1,090 visitors per day; 32,800 per month. A strikingly scholarly online pub in an often superficial blogosphere, Arts and Letters Daily is laid out like an old-fashioned newspaper. Stories range from breaking news on John Milton to ruminations on ‘The Complete Playboy Centerfolds.’

91) SmittenKitchen: 1,030 visitors per day; 31,000 per month. I usually don’t like to copy and paste blog descriptions, but I like this one, so here you go: SmittenKitchen is “a home cooking weblog from a tiny kitchen in New York City, with a focus on simplifying daunting recipes and encouraging fearlessness in the kitchen.”

92) A List Apart: 830 visitors per day; 25,100 per month. A List Apart is another excellent offering among the myriad blogs dedicated to making you a better blogger. In addition to content, the site focuses on design, development and web standards.

93) n+1: 810 visitors per day; 24,400 per month. A new literary journal, n+1 has slowly supplanted McSweeney’s (about 14,000 visitors per month), as the fictionattis pub of choice. Based in NYC, the print and online mag is witty, readable and, most importantly, refreshing.

94) Silicon Valley Watcher: 750 visitors per day; 22,400 per month. A blog on the business and culture of Silicon Valley. Written from the perspective of an old media journalist (Tom Foremski) the site dives into new media and the rocky transition between the two.

95) Scripting News: 650 visitors per day; 19,700 per month. A tech blog that dives deeper and more personally into the latest tech news, Scripting News is run by Dave Winer (former contributing editor at Wired and a research fellow at Harvard Law). Winer’s ruminations are often fascinating — from his thoughts on Michael Phelps and pot to the OpenID movement (if you can call it that).

96) Make You Go Hmm: 650 visitors per day; 19,400 per month. A quirky tech and culture site, Make You Go Hmm, posts on everything from Dominos pizza ads to Obama’s inauguration speech.

97) Roy Tanck’s WordPress Blog: 600 visitors per day; 18,000 per month. Dedicated to WordPress news, widgets, themes and other tech gossip, Roy Tanck also posts original, open-source WordPress themes on his blog.

98) Daily Blog Tips: 425 visitors per day; 12,800 per month. Devoted to giving readers tips on making blogs more successful, Daily Blog Tips founder Daniel Scocco points out that 180,000 new blogs get created everyday — and most of them don’t get any traffic.

99) The Blog Herald: 390 visitors per day; 11,800 per month. A site for Web publishers and news that matters to them, The Blog Herald has a large staff devoted to things like SEO, blog news, and the future of the blogging industry.

100) CopyBlogger: 270 visitors per day; 8,100 per month. A blogging site dedicated to making you a better blogger, CopyBlogger is run by “recovering attorney” Brian Clark. Clark preaches “action words” and other fundamentals behind writing good copy.

Does your blog belong on our list? Send your Quantcast stats to fred(at)webpublishing.me, and I’ll add it!