Traffic Rankings for Major Business and Economics Websites
Brian Gongol


Next update: On or about June 3, 2013. The most recent ratings are always found at EconDirectory.com.

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If your favorite site isn't listed, here's why.



The ratio of each site's page views or visits to that of the top-rated site is used to illustrate a relative level of influence (among visitors to business and economics weblogs) compared to that of the top 200 daily newspapers in the US (among all newspaper readers).

Example:

Site Average daily pageviews Pageview ratio
Blog A 200 200 / 200 = 1.000
Blog B 100 100 / 200 = 0.500
Blog C 80 80 / 200 = 0.400


Now, we compare these to the (old) circulations of some of the top 200 daily newspapers in the US:

Newspaper Daily circulation Circulation ratio
USA Today 2,528,437 2,528,437 / 2,528,437 = 1.0000
New York Times 1,683,855 1,683,855 / 2,528,437 = 0.6660
Los Angeles Times 1,231,318 1,231,318 / 2,528,437 = 0.4870
Chicago Tribune 957,212 957,212 / 2,528,437 = 0.3786
New York Daily News 795,153 795,153 / 2,528,437 = 0.3145

Thus, by pageviews, Blog A is the USA Today of the economics/business blogosphere, since it gets more pageviews each day than any other site in the same category. By pageviews, Blog B is the the Los Angeles Times of the economics/business blogosphere, and Blog C is roughly the Chicago Tribune of the economics blogosphere.

The rankings and comparisons are repeated on the basis of daily visits, as well:

Site Average daily visits Visit ratio
Blog A 150 150 / 150 = 1.0000
Blog B 100 100 / 150 = 0.6667
Blog C 50 50 / 150 = 0.3333

Thus, by visits, Blog A is the USA Today of the economics/business blogosphere, since it gets more visits each day than any other comparable site. By daily visits, Blog B is the New York Times and Blog C is roughly the New York Daily News of the economics blogosphere.

This comparison is helpful because no one would suggest that the New York Times is merely two-thirds as influential as USA Today -- even though it claims nearly a million fewer readers. Thus, a site getting just half the traffic of the top-rated site in the category may still be very influential in its own right; the newspaper rankings are intended solely to illustrate that fact.

These rankings are based solely upon the websites' publicly-available traffic logs; sites without those logs clearly available for public viewing are not included in these rankings, though they are listed in the general directory.