Who’s got the biggest travel blog? It’s hard to tell — really hard, given the vagaries and imperfections of the blog ranking tools. But with a little research, you can generate a somewhat reliable list.
Here are the eight biggest travel blogs:
1. TravelPod (Technorati authority 3,797; Alexa rank 8,294)
2. Gothamist (Technorati authority 3,375; Alexa rank 12,189)
3. Gadling (Technorati authority 1,622; Alexa rank 14,271)
4. Gridskipper (Technorati authority 1,303; Alexa rank 22,053)
5. Travelblog (Technorati authority 1,185; Alexa rank 7,825)
6. BootsnAll (Technorati authority 827; Alexa rank 17,304)
7. Jaunted (Technorati authority 677; Alexa rank 18,196)
8. Worldhum (Technorati authority 424; Alexa rank 133,107)
What does this list mean to you?
Well, if you’re an aspiring travel blogger, it means a lot. Three of these blogs — TravelPod, Travelblog and BootsnAll — are community-written sites where you can set up a presence and benefit from the blog’s high rankings immediately.
The remaining blogs are group-written. So there’s no single-author, all-powerful travel blog like Daily Kos that the travel industry must ingratiate itself to. (Technically, Kos has contributors, but let’s not kid ourselves. It’s his blog.)
How are these ranking are going to change in the next six months? I think one single-author blog may crack the top eight in the near future, but it’s more likely that the community-written blogs will cement their grip on the top spots.
But your guess is as good as mine.
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I tend to trust Compete.com when it comes to rankings, and not just because they put Gadling on top of this list. :) Here’s how it stacks up (for the month of March) according to them:
gadling.com 514,965
travelpod.com 243,901
gridskipper.com 235,239
gothamist.com 228,683
bootsnall.com 159,286
jaunted.com 125,769
elliott.org 22,311
worldhum.com 21,612
travelblog.com 799
…and according to compete.com, elliott.org comes in just above worldhum.com:
elliott.org 22,311
Real Simple has a list of best blogs…
http://www.realsimple.com/realsimple/gallery/0,21863,1707840,00.html
Travel
blogs.bootsnall.com/seafarer
http://www.elliott.org
http://www.intelligenttravel.typepad.com
Hey, awesome, thanks for placing TravelPod at number one! It’s definitely a competitive marketplace, but I think TravelPod consistently comes out on top because of our dedicated community of inspiring writers!
Louise Brown
TravelPod Community Manager
Interesting list, Chris. Alexa is infamous for out-of-touch numbers (they showed YouTube as outpacing Google about a year ago, oops) but you’ve got to pick your poison.
Our Daily Travel & Deal blog has an Alexa rank of 440 today (yes, we benefit from our latimes.com affiliation).
Our Technorati rank is 18,829 — looks like you’re actually referencing Technorati “authority” in your numbers (”the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months”), rather than Technorati Rank, where lower actually means less popular. Our current authority is 320.
As for Compete, they don’t extract travel.latimes.com numbers from LAT.com traffic, so they show our posts passing in front of as many as 3.3m pairs of eyeballs in March.
Any way you care to slice it, it’s great to see the growth of group and individual travel blogs continue to snowball.
In adventure,
Andrew, Sr. Producer
LATimes.com Travel
Good point, Andrew. I was, indeed, referring to authority. I’ve fixed that. Your blog definitely belongs on this list. I wish there were something more reliable than Technorati/Alexa. As I said, these are very imprecise ways of measuring traffic and authority.
This is an interesting list, but I don’t see how Gothamist is a travel blog at all really. In fact, I think Gothamist is mainly targeted at New Yorkers doing things in New York. I’m a huge Gothamist fan, but I think it’s misplaced in a ranking of travel blogs. They certainly feature restaurants, shows and places to go, but I don’t see much travel information on offer, and many of the stories are neighborhood gossip pieces that are only of interest to people living in the city.