I was inspired and bored the other day. And that’s never good for anyone.
After seeing Daniel Florien‘s list, and this list of popular church blogs, I had a desire to crunch some numbers.
Disclaimer: Ranking popularity is a way to measure quantity over quality. And when it comes to writing about atheism, there’s a great argument to be made that quality of postings is far more important than how popular your blog is. I would hope the higher ranking blogs combine the best of both worlds. But there are several excellent writers who don’t get nearly as much attention as they should.
I think I included just about all the major atheist blogs in my calculations… if you post frequently and have been around for a while, I think I got you. (I hope I did, at least.)
At the risk of seeming arrogant, I threw my own blog into the mix as well.
The material is up to date as of February 8th, 2009.
Explanation of all the abbreviations — and the methodology — is below the chart.
If I made any mistakes, please let me know. Obviously, the criteria I used is subjective and there are many other ways to measure a blog’s popularity, but these seemed to be decent ways to go about it.
The list will surely need updating with different methods. The one I think throws the data off the most is the Google PageRank, where a difference of one number moved a website to a completely different spot on the list.
| Order | Name | Rank | AR | GP | GRS | TA | TIL |
| 1 | Pharyngula (PZ Myers) | 1.4 | 11525 | 7 | 4288 | 2438 | 15246 |
| 2 | Friendly Atheist (Hemant Mehta) | 3.8 | 115700 | 5 | 3016 | 563 | 4298 |
| 3 | Cynical-C Blog | 4.4 | 59035 | 6 | 530 | 400 | 2229 |
| 4 | About Agnosticism/Atheism (Austin Cline) | 5.0 | 82 | 6 | 470 | 397 | 1909 |
| 5 | Skepchick (Rebecca Watson) | 5.8 | 145402 | 5 | 2744 | 337 | 1947 |
| 6 | Cectic (Rudis Muiznieks) | 9.8 | 135444 | 5 | 2498 | 113 | 704 |
| 7 | Jesus and Mo | 10.0 | 186071 | 5 | 1319 | 181 | 641 |
| 8 | New Humanist Blog | 10.4 | 199316 | 6 | 435 | 153 | 956 |
| 9 | Skeptico | 10.6 | 251764 | 5 | 825 | 175 | 807 |
| 10 | Greta Christina’s Blog | 10.8 | 369258 | 5 | 490 | 186 | 1630 |
| 11 | Atheist Revolution (vjack) | 11.4 | 177583 | 5 | 259 | 216 | 1622 |
| 11 | Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster | 11.4 | 77562 | 4 | 369 | 1207 | 3491 |
| 13 | Daylight Atheism (Ebonmuse) | 12.6 | 294517 | 5 | 379 | 158 | 1153 |
| 14 | Unreasonable Faith (Daniel Florien) | 15.0 | 207141 | 4 | 659 | 319 | 669 |
| 15 | Atheist Media Blog | 16.8 | 230307 | 5 | 281 | 116 | 436 |
| 16 | Deep Thoughts (Mojoey) | 18.6 | 299925 | 4 | 182 | 320 | 1230 |
| 17 | Rationally Speaking (Massimo Pigliucci) | 19.0 | 1641976 | 5 | 435 | 121 | 437 |
| 18 | Evolved and Rational (Shalini Sehkar) | 19.2 | 538574 | 5 | 181 | 87 | 604 |
| 19 | The Meming of Life (Dale McGowan) | 19.6 | 890907 | 5 | 356 | 94 | 419 |
| 20 | Atheist Ethicist (Alonzo Fyfe) | 20.6 | 1113580 | 5 | 288 | 78 | 473 |
| 20 | Debunking Christianity (John Loftus) | 20.6 | 214440 | 5 | 297 | N/A | 538 |
| 22 | The Digital Cuttlefish | 21.2 | 1443844 | 5 | 191 | 90 | 514 |
| 23 | Unscrewing the Inscrutable (Brent Rasmussen) | 23.6 | 1030042 | 5 | 17 | 110 | 786 |
| 24 | Julia Sweeney | 24.4 | 3577056 | 5 | 507 | 67 | 209 |
| 25 | Teen Skepchick | 24.8 | 145402 | 5 | 170 | 35 | 103 |
| 26 | The Atheist Blogger (Adrian Hayter) | 25.0 | 278736 | 3 | 233 | 135 | 524 |
| 27 | Splendid Elles | 27.2 | 1499540 | 5 | 137 | 42 | 254 |
| 28 | No More Hornets (The Exterminator) | 28.4 | 3500617 | 5 | 96 | 50 | 403 |
| 28 | Possummomma | 28.4 | 4244850 | 4 | 387 | 75 | 495 |
| 30 | Oz Atheist’s Weblog | 28.6 | 1664861 | 5 | 61 | 51 | 293 |
What do the abbrevations stand for? (Explanations taken from here.)
- AR = Alexa Rankings (lower number is more popular)
Alexa’s traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users and data collected from other, diverse sources over a rolling 3 month period. A site’s ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and pageviews. Reach is determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day. Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single pageview. The site with the highest combination of users and pageviews is ranked #1. - GP = Google PageRank (higher number is more popular)
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” - GRS = Google Reader Subscribers (higher number is more popular)
The number of Google Reader users that subscribe to each blog. - TA = Technorati Authority (higher number is more popular)
Authority is determined by the number of unique blogs indexed by Technorati that have linked to that blog in the past 180 days. - TIL = Technorati InLinks (higher number is more popular)
The total number of links that a blog has received.
How was the list computed?
- Approximately 60 well-known atheist blogs were selected. I don’t think I missed any blog that posts on a regular basis and has done so for quite some time.
- Data was collected for each blog from all 5 measured criteria (i.e., Alexa Rank, Google PageRank, Google Reader Subscribers, Technorati Authority, and Technorati InLinks).
- For each of the 5 measured criteria, each blog was ranked in comparison to all other blogs being evaluated.
- A composite rank for each blog is determined by averaging each blogs ranking from the 5 measured criteria.
- The top 30 blogs were published.
- In the circumstance of a tie, alphabetical order was used.