#1 in the Big 10...MGoBlog that is

Submitted by Yooper on

A little while ago another poster [just identified as willywill9, sorry for the delay] cited Quantcast as a reputable source for measuring visitors to various websites.  I thought it would be interesting to rank the Big 10 blogs.  I don't claim that I did an exhaustive search, but I did look up the blogs referenced here at MGoBlog, those noted at SBNation, as well as a couple of others sources, and used the highest ranked I could find.  Here are the results, based on the rankings of all websites monitored by Quantcast.  I did a sanity check of the Quantcast results with another web traffic monitoring service that directionally confirmed the Quantcast information.  The final rankings are based on the Quantcast data.  The Quantcast ranking is noted.

     1.  Michigan             MGoBlog                       (9,995)
     2.  Iowa                    BlackHeartGoldPants   (27,558)
     3.  Penn State          BlackShoeDiaries         (38,611) 
     4.  Michigan State    TheOnlyColors             (49,263)
     5.  Ohio State           Eleven Warriors           (65,878)
     6.  Purdue                 HammerandRails          (72,712)
     7.  Minnesota            TheDailyGopher          (74,545)
     8.  Wisconsin             Buckys5thQuarter       (80,744)
     9.  Indiana                TheCrimsonQuarry     (128,023) 
    10. Northwestern        SippnOnPurple         (198,832)
    11. Ilinois                   HailtotheOrange        (212,320)
 
Some other sites of interest:
     Nebraska                 Cornnation.com             (29,374)
     Maize 'n Brew                                                (39,315)
     RCMB                     SpartanTailgate.com      (842,514)   
 
For some perspective as to the popularity of this site, I went behind the rankings a bit.  The numbers noted (rounded for convenience) reflect the average for the last 6 months.  Recent months, not surprisingly, are higher:
 
                               People/month          Visits/month     Pageviews/month
     MGoBlog                 200,000                    1,300,000              6,000,000
     ElevenWarrors          24,000                       100,000                 325,000
     HailtotheOrange        6,000                           8,500                   13,500
     RCMB                         2,000                           1,400                     9,500
 
Even allowing for the inherent challenges with website tracking, I find the results rather remarkable.  What do you think?
 
[mod disclaimer: these statistics are different than Alexa and other groups and likely don't capture full traffic. ex: RCMB receives more traffic than MGoBlog per Alexa.]

Comments

formerlyanonymous

October 25th, 2010 at 12:42 PM ^

Probably this. Caveat is that SMQB, now Dr. Saturday, gets his stuff posted to yahoo's sports page fairly regularly. Brian was beating him handily prior to the move from SBNation.

EDSBS was the next closest college blog over any other time period. I want to say that Brian regularly outdraws Orson, too.

Captain

October 25th, 2010 at 12:45 PM ^

Correct, here is Brian's own take on the subject:

It's a guess [that MGoBlog is the #1 CFB blog], but a solid one. But you can see public stats on this blog here:
http://www.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s49mgoblog

Orson's are here, and I'm pretty sure he's #2:
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s18orsonswindle
That's about 25%.

I don't have DocSat numbers, and can't think of anyone else who'd be close. The best SBN blogs IME are BON
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s21burnt
and RTT
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s24rockytoptalk
...and they're way off.

BGS used to be the biggest because of ND Nation but Quantcast estimates they're well behind now:
http://www.quantcast.com/bluegraysky.blogspot.com

http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/top-college-football-blogs

Seth

October 25th, 2010 at 12:44 PM ^

Very nice to see the guys at The Only Colors are getting the boost from MSU's good season. EDIT: Yeah, the RCMB numbers were funky as expected.

Oaktown Wolverine

October 25th, 2010 at 12:48 PM ^

 

                               People/month          Visits/month     Pageviews/month
     MGoBlog                 200,000                   1,300,000               6,000,000
     ElevenWarrors          24,000                      100,000                  325,000
 
They have the internet in Columbus now?

mmiicchhiiggaann

October 25th, 2010 at 1:32 PM ^

Pretty big discepancy between the 200k people a month on Quantcast. Compared to the data on sitemeter which says 662 a day (20k)? I'm assuming sitemeter is more accurate. Or am i misintepreting the data?

Brian

October 25th, 2010 at 1:36 PM ^

I turned Sitemeter off, but it still has a bunch of cached pages that turn up a fraction of the hits. Quantcast is accurate. MGoBlog did almost 7 million pageviews in September, which is why we had to scramble to fix all those 504 errors.

The only thing that looks off to me is the RCMB. I bet it does more traffic than this place, though it's 99% message board instead of 50-50.

GardeT

October 25th, 2010 at 1:47 PM ^

Those stats appear very skewed.  I would be interested to go through and look at all of the numbers listed. 

Here is a quick galnce from Alexa:

RCMB-Spartantailgate: 7,332 US RANK

MGOBLOG : US: 7,938 US RANK

NateVolk

October 25th, 2010 at 1:53 PM ^

Lethal combination: unbeatable information and analysis that is also super timely; about a subject that grabs hard at people on an emotional level.

For fun, watch MSM media popularity rankings and comment volume where Michigan State and Michigan are both covered.   I'll bet Michigan football articles are even or better for both criteria.  2010, with events unfolding like they are, that is astounding.

Michigan draws eyeballs.  Mgo keeps them glued to one spot.

jamiemac

October 25th, 2010 at 2:34 PM ^

Wait, what no mention of the JCB as a Big 10 blog?

I'd be hurt, except seeing my traffic compared to these guys would be way way way more embarrasing

Trevor Barnes

October 25th, 2010 at 3:13 PM ^

Hey guys, been a fan of Brian's for a while even if I feel he has questionable loyalties. 

I can tell you that those Quancast stats for SpartanTailgate.com and the RCMB are way off, so I really question the accuracy of their "estimates" across the board.  We used to use their direct tracking cookie system for a while but eventually removed it in favor of just using Google Analytics instead.  I'm guessing there might still be some of Quantcast's tracking cookie code that I missed when I removed them from our site, and that's what they are currently recording.

Some corrected stats for our site...

Page Views per month
Estimate in the original post: 9,500
Actual: around 8,000,000

People (Absolute Unique Visitors) per month:
Estimate in original post: 2,000
Actual: around 400,000

We aren't really a "blog" site per say though so I'm not sure this is an apples to apples comparison.

MightAndMainWeCheer

October 25th, 2010 at 7:59 PM ^

The site traffic stats show that there are 400,000 page views a month; the poster was questioning whether there are 400,000 living MSU alums b/c otherwise there would be MSU fans who didn't *gasp* graduate from MSU.  Obviously the logic doesn't follow b/c the stats don't say whether they are unique visitors.

Notwithstanding the poor logic, the poster's point was to take a dig at the Walmart Wolverines label that Spartan fans love to place on Michigan fans who don't/didn't attend/graduate from Michigan.

Can somebody please explain why you need to go to a school in order to be a fan?

BlueVoix

October 25th, 2010 at 6:13 PM ^

I believe it's largest alumni association based on membership size.

I would think a school like University of Phoenix with their 1.8 million enrollment size and regular graduation size would be able to eclipse any other school's alumni numbers quite quickly.

bronxblue

October 25th, 2010 at 7:41 PM ^

Nice breakdown.  I figured MGoBlog was at the top simply because I really cannot think of another established college blog other than EDSBS, and that is a more general forum.  Per the mod edit, I would think RCMB has more traffic, though I still think MGoBlog has a more consistent following.  97.1 radio hosts can only generate so much traffic at RCMB.  :-)