Dental Town: How Does Blog Traffic Compare

Flap was discussing with a colleague today about the immense growth of the blogosphere and what it means for dental bulletin boards and web sites. So, I started to compare.

Here is the Dental Town site probably the largest (at least by Howard Farran’s claims) dental bulletin board site. It boasts over 56,000 members (unverifiable and likely a grossly inflated number since so-called Townies can join with more than one name and/or identity). There are no sitemeter counters that Flap can see on the site.

A better indicator of traffic is the number of visitors (dentists most probably but there is no verification of occupation since verification is only an e-mail address) who complete the Dental Town annual survey.

So far only around 800 plus participants have completeed the on-line survey in ten days this month. Granted some dentists may be on vacation, but that only means 80 participants per day.

An estimate of traffic is difficult at best. Of course, Dental Town could place a public site meter on their site but this might influence advertising revenues if their claims do not match reality.

On the other hand, the blogosphere has The Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem. Flap has listed the traffic of the top 25 blogs. Tremendous traffic by anyone’s count.

1) Daily Kos: State of the Nation 538162 visits/day (4)
2) Gizmodo: The Gadgets Weblog 212559 visits/day (87)
3) Gawker 149866 visits/day (164)
4) Instapundit.com 131878 visits/day (2)
5) Defamer 129915 visits/day (392)
6) Eschaton 119014 visits/day (10)
7) lgf: this space unintentionally left blank 87399 visits/day (7)
8) Go Fug Yourself 79098 visits/day (321)
9) Michelle Malkin 75674 visits/day (3)
10) Power Line 72942 visits/day (5)
11) Crooks and Liars 62627 visits/day (58)
12) Scared Monkeys 61630 visits/day (301)
13) Wonkette 56885 visits/day (44)
14) A Socialite’s Life 49944 visits/day (2760)
15) Blogcritics.org 49928 visits/day (68)
16) The Smirking Chimp 42683 visits/day (465)
17) The Washington Monthly 39718 visits/day (16)
18) Riehl World View 34371 visits/day (437)
19) Blog for America 33746 visits/day (645)
20) www.AndrewSullivan.com – Daily Dish 31283 visits/day (18)
21) Captain’s Quarters 28615 visits/day (6)
22) Hugh Hewitt 26906 visits/day (14)
23) Lifehacker 23153 visits/day (464)
24) MyDD :: Due Diligence of Politics, Election Forecast & the World Today 21908 visits/day (80)
25) PoliPundit.com 21367 visits/day (41)

Flap has made his point.

The blogosphere is seen by many more dentists and non-dentists each day than a dedicated dental bulletin board site, Dental Town. Dental Town has a print magazine which is distributed free to thousands of dental offices each month and drives traffic to its site. But, not nearly as much traffic as the blogs.

Why should dental product and service advertisers pay thousands of dollars to Howard Farran’s media group for a worn out, declining print media business and a bulletin board with less traffic?

Look for dental product manufacturers and distributors establishing their own blogs to self-promote and market their products and services. Why pay a middle man?

Ask the Los Angeles Times.

The future belongs to the blogosphere.