YAMoPo 2008: Yet Another Most Popular Architecture Sites Ranking

Jul 2008

By David Assael — Filed under: Websites , YAMoPo

We are architects, and during the last few years we have been reading and commenting on several architectural websites. As many of you do, we love to watch, learn and discuss about architecture online, with people from around the world. One day we decided to put all these sites together to get the whole picture on architectural sites, and then order them according to our likings. But in the meanwhile, we noticed it wasn’t that easy, because each one of us had different interests and approaches. In our listings, several sites were repeated, but in different places.

So, we decided to find a way to make a standardized procedure to rank and order these sites. Then we noticed Michiel van Raaij at Eikonographia repeated the ranking he started in 2007, the MoPo (Most Popular Architectural Blogs). Although Michiel did a very accurate job, he restricted it to English blogs from individual authors, leaving out several of our favorite blogs from either foreign languages or multiple authors, and some other sitess that mix architecture with other related subjects (design, sustainability, trends, etc).

To expand this rank, we decided to put together some common criteria. The most logical criteria should be the amount of visitors, but this is almost impossible since most sites don’t publish these stats. But there are some other factors you can use to measure the relevance of a website: (a) Rank of websites based on an estimate of their traffic, by Alexa, (b) Google Page Rank and (c) and the frequency of the updates, an average of the entries published in the last 2 months (done by us). That´s how we came up with YAMoPo (Yet Another MoPo).

With all this data, we started to compare our sites listings, and given their focus we decided to (1) shorten the list to the top 40 (after those, most sites don´t update much often) and (2) separate this listing in 2 types of sites: sites devoted to architecture only and sites that mix architecture with other subjects (trends, design, sustainability).

3 Conclusions

It´s clear that architecture exclusive sites are less popular than the ones that cover architecture, trends and design.
Most of the websites are in English (same as almost the whole Internet).
The frequency of updates is highly valued by visitors, which explain us why our blog isn´t at the end of the ranks despite being started a couple of months ago. Sites that have a better rank update frequently, even several times at a day.

During the next weeks we will present and explain some of these websites, in order to clarify the new panorama of architecture publications on the Web.

Also, as we found out that MoPo wasn´t accurate from our point of view, some of you might think the same about ours, so feel free to leave your comments and recommended sites.

And now, to the ranks:

Architecture only

Architecture and related

Overall (Arch only + Arch & related)

Inhabitat
Mocoloco
Dezeen
Notcot
Archinect
The Coolhunter
World Architecture News
Dwell Blog
World Changing
E-Architect
Plataforma Arquitectura
Materialicious
Architecture MNP
BldgBlog
Eikongraphia
Edgar Gonzalez
Architonic
Below the Clouds
ArchiDose
Noticias Arquitectura
Mirage Studio 7
World Architects
Dezain
Archdaily
City of Sound
Building Design
Pruned
MyarchN
Dezona
Arqa
Interactive Architecture
Tropolism
Arkinetia Blog
World Architecture Community
Things Magazine
anArchitecture
The Architecture Room
Life Without Buildings
Death by Architecture
Subtopia

Comments? Sugestions? Rants?

63 comments »

soleundurraga says:

Great for Plataforma Arquitectura!

# July 2, 2008 at 18:41

edgar says:

gracias por el ranking….!!!!
buen trabajo

saludos

# July 2, 2008 at 19:19

Zahaha Hadid says:

1) Archinect, World Architecture News, E-Architect, World Architecture Community, The Architecture Room, MyarchN and Death by Architecture are not “blogs”.

2) Things Magazine is not “Architecture only”.

3) City of Sound and Tropolism are “Architecture only”, i.e., their overhwelming concern is “architecture”.

4) Why the last 2 months?

5) What is this “average of the entries”? Per day? Per week? Per fortnight? Per monthly? And why this average and not that average?

6) What is considered the minimum “architecture” coverage, wherein above it a blog would be considered “Architecture only” and below this threshold it would be placed with Notcot? 50% of the posts within the past 2 months? Some other percentage within some period of time? Why that percentage and that period of time?

7) How are these “other subjects” not “architecture”?

8) Why is there no mention of RSS subscribers?

9) How is the Alexa traffic estimated? Eyeballing? Some straight edge on the computer screen?

10) When you say “the relevance of a website”, what did you mean by “relevance”?

11) One of your “factors” is the “frequency of updates”. Your third conclusion says something about the frequency of updates. If not self-fulfilling, this might be a case of selection bias.

12) Maybe instead of a list of “popular blogs”, you should just do a list of the “best blogs”. The latter is editorial. It’s your opinion. People may question your judgement but at least they’re not going to bawl over your claim of a “standardized procedure” or objective criteria when in reality that the whole thing’s just a cornucopia of arbritrariness and illogical methodologies.

# July 2, 2008 at 20:54

David Basulto says:

Zaha,

Some answers:

Our mistake, i´m removing “Blog” from the title, and changing it to “sites”.

Alexa is a complex system that has become the standard for something very hard to measure. But Alexa + Google Page Rank (relevance) are the best parameters we have. Technorati isn’t worth it.

About feeds, it’s a data we don’t have for all this sites, so we left it out. If everyone had a public feedburner banner, it would be considered.

About the point 11, it’s to encourage everyone to have more updates ;)

And please note that this is the list of the sites we frequent and that’s why i state that it’s very likely that this isn’t definitive, but at least it allows other good blogs/sites left out of the MoPo to be credited.

I appreciate your comments. Who would think that Zaha cares that much about blogs when her site should be on the web museum? ;)

# July 2, 2008 at 21:24

Jonathan Budd says:

World Architecture Community is a new portal inaugurated on 1 March 2008. Most noteworthy activity is the recently announced Awards Program 20+10+x where submissions are free.

It is true that traffic rankings are very problematic. The common practice is based on the number of unique visitors which ignores their loyalty and the “the depth” of their visits.

Now, WA has a very high average number of pages per visit: 16-26 (recorded by Alexa in various days). This is an incredible value compared to 2-4 pages for architectural portals of highest ranking.

We can observe from Google Analytics that many visitors visit more than 100 pages, some even 250.

This is due to the many interactive features where content is uploaded by community members who have reached 1700 people from 120 countries in 4 months.

# July 3, 2008 at 03:24

ranking is allways a subjetctive subject.
and a great deal of work to develop and do,

congratulations to archdaily, and to the critics, I say : why don´t do your own?
I think is pretty professional the work that AD has done here, and a very loable one.

Stop just critizicing and be more proactive,

cheers
E.

# July 3, 2008 at 08:01

Daniel says:

Woho, I made the list! Not bad for a small design blog from Sweden…

Let me know if you need detailed stats for a follow up article!

Cheers,
Daniel

# July 3, 2008 at 08:33

Eduardo says:

There’s a quite intersting site form Brazil called Vitruvius, with articles and news about brazilian and world architecture its adress: http://www.vitruvius.com.br/

# July 3, 2008 at 08:47

VItor Gabriel says:

Missing this one:
http://www.ultimasreportagens.com
Lots of articles and the place to see good architectural work in Portugal and around the world.

# July 3, 2008 at 09:14

I think if you do a call up for statistics, most of the people would be willing to share them and all could benefit from a more precise calculation…
dont you think so?

# July 3, 2008 at 09:39

andrés besomi [peng!] says:

congratulations for the work that you have been done in ArchDaily!
aguante pNet!

# July 3, 2008 at 11:06

myarchN Team says:

On behalf of our community we thank you for the listing.
cheers!

# July 3, 2008 at 11:40

Justin says:

I’m honored to be included in the list. Thank you.

# July 3, 2008 at 11:45

Michael McKenzie says:

Terrific idea to rank sites, it’s a great list to discover.

I would highly recommend > myarchn > AND make it known that this site is not ‘architecture only’ In fact it is a very fast growing site because its posts and forums are filled with social issues, music, photography, environment, climate, and sustainability discussions and it is a very informative, interesting and fun place to be. Come and visit..and say hello to me there!
Cheers, and thanks much for your efforts!

# July 3, 2008 at 11:51

Zahaha Did says:

Zahaha does E.

Zahaha says, the topic is this list not a phantom list.

Zahaha says, you can have an objective object, with reasonable amount of qualifications, as with any other, if not, then, what’s up with Archdaily’s very laudable attempt toward such a goal?

Zahaha says, criticism is proactive.

Zahaha says, involuntary praise is not.

Zahaha asked questions, because Zahaha cares.

Zahaha cares.

# July 3, 2008 at 18:56

martin says:

i’m surprised you didn’t include bustler – http://www.bustler.net

# July 4, 2008 at 15:25

anonymom says:

isn’t bustler just part of archinect?

# July 5, 2008 at 02:20

JUST COOL Design Blog says:

hmmm … thanks for the list …i think ill add it to my blog which is a hodge podge of architecture, design and rambling. i really think people are looking for a more engaging narrative on these architecture blogs – to connect more personally with the writer, then just to read a generic, cut and paste architectural description, post after boring post. atleast thats my feeling on it and what i attempt to do on mine. (but then again, architects can be very anal, very straightlaced people ;) – so maybe that is what they like to read haha

and wowsa! you’ve only been a blog for a couple / few months!??? sheesh, im highly impressed! coulda fooled me

# July 6, 2008 at 12:24

whoops can i retract that anal straightlaced comment…

# July 6, 2008 at 12:27

Mark Tibbs says:

Wow, that’s a lot of modernism up there. 3 sites that don’t explicitly embrace modern structures with at least every other post. How about Hewn & Hammered and other sites like it? > http://www.hewnandhammered.com/

# July 7, 2008 at 12:42

Fredrik Stenstrom says:

1. Inhabitat
2. Mocoloco
3. Dezeen
4. Notcot
5. The Coolhunter

I love your site and frequently visit it but dude you forgot one of my best design site on the net, Yanko Design! based on my research, Yanko has the highest Alexa ranking than the top 5 you mentioned here. They even show their public feedburner stats out, currently showing 9200. That is not easy to do.

# July 7, 2008 at 16:27

oops forgot to add the link http://www.yankodesign.com/

India Architects says:

Those are some great link. Some i visit pretty regularly. I find the idea of showcasing your work, designs or ideas extremely conducive to design as a whole.

# July 10, 2008 at 07:54

architechnophilia says:

I got bumped. Sad…I’ll have to endeavor to be up there with such great company. Ambition is always good.

Thanks for this…great set of links

# July 10, 2008 at 17:34

Bradley Swarts says:

…another list, another missed opportunity. Or perhaps you are just not aware of our little site (east coast Architecture review)? Guess I picked the wrong 2 months to start taking the A.R.E. and btw Alexa rankings are horribly inaccurate.

# July 11, 2008 at 17:40

lalai says:

cool list!! Visit http://www.rseefo.com.br. It’s a great brazilian blog about architecture

# July 22, 2008 at 14:11

John says:

Where is http://www.arcilook.com? I prefer this one.

# September 11, 2008 at 19:47

Sean says:

Thanks, that list will keep me busy for a while. Its great to see all the blogging on architecture and just how varied the topics can be.

A little self promotion if that’s alright. I have an architecture blog at EVstudio.info. Its a little different and talks about the practical side of a lot of daily work along with some information on the projects that we’re doing. Please check it out and feel free to comment.

Thanks again, great list.

# March 30, 2009 at 01:56

Sorry try this again. http://www.evstudio.info is my blog. Again, I’d love to hear what you guys think of the daily postings.

# March 30, 2009 at 01:57

architects says:

Thanks.The links given are great.

# March 30, 2009 at 05:23

Eliana Braga says:

take a look at
http://www.arcoweb.com.br
Brazil’s interiors and architecture!
thanks

# March 30, 2009 at 09:59

Marcos says:

http://www.portalconstru.com.br
Architecture, construction, decoration, design, engineering and landscaping
Thanks

# April 20, 2009 at 20:11

kaliczka says:

on the list should be ARILOOK blog. Why is not there???

# April 22, 2009 at 08:01

ARCILOOK sorry :)))

hoorceMog says:

Super article.. Hope to come back again soon..

# May 20, 2009 at 15:35

French Architect says:

I think that http://freshome.com/ would be something that is a must in this list.

# May 29, 2009 at 13:43

Mimari Proje says:

These are super sites for architecture. Great article and pictures… Thank you.

# June 9, 2009 at 00:47

Martin Houle says:

Born on July 2006, Kollectif emerges from a simple question: what would be the ideal Quebec (Canada) based architecture website?

It’s in trying to answer that question that the idea of building a website gathering lectures, vernissages and exhibits all in one place took form. And why not add a directory of the best pratices in the province, a job section and a few articles on what’s happening in the other design spheres? Blessed with a great network of contacts built over the years, Kollectif took it upon itself to facilitate communication within the architectural community and to regroup under one roof, articles pertaining to design, construction, theory and the profession. Does the site answer the initial question? Well, it’s the goal that it’s constantly striving to reach!

The Kollectif website is in partnership since January 2008 with the Building Montréal UNESCO City of Design project (http://www.realisonsmontreal.com/en/), an initiative created by the City of Montreal.

# October 12, 2009 at 13:20

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