Top Church of Christ Blogs – November 2009 Edition
November 4, 2009 33 Comments
Time for the latest round up of blogs by members of the Church of Christ. If there are any you think should be on here run an alexa search to confirm, comment on the omission and I will update the list. The change column represents the change in rank since the last time this was updated in July (see this post).
There are several things that are surprising to me on this list:
- The first is that it shows alexa is not as accurate as it is cracked up to be. For instance, Bill Williams (#57) gets about 100 views a day, which is more than a couple of the ones ranked in the 30s that get roughly 20 views a day. Another one in this boat is Terry Rush who I am certain gets close to 100 views a day or more and is ranked #48.
- Another surprising thing is the ascendency of Mitchell Skelton (6), Tim Archer (7), and Matthew Morine (8). John Dobbs’ numbers are also coming back as he had recently changed URL’s when the last list was composed.
- Also there are several newcomers to the list who did quite well including Craig Ford (10) who has an excellent Christian personal finance blog and who is a friend of mine from Harding Grad.
- Last, it is impressive that the last list in July had 47 blogs ranking up to 20 million in Alexa. This list shows our blogs are starting to stack up better over all with 56 blogs ranked better than 8 million. For those who don’t know what Alexa is, it is a ranking system that tries to order blogs based on traffic. An alexa rank of 1 means that website is the site with the most traffic on the web. So the lower the better.
Check out a few of these links, you may find some excellent blogs you didn’t know were out there.
Untitled Document
| Rank | Blog | Alexa | Change |
| 1 | Edward Fudge | 70k | 0 |
| 2 | Al Maxey | 102k | 0 |
| 3 | Matt Dabbs | 229k | +2 |
| 4 | Laura Coppinger | 261k | NA |
| 5 | Jay Guin | 324k | -2 |
| 6 | Jim Martin | 493k | +3 |
| 7 | Peter Horne | 538k | NA |
| 8 | Mitchell Skelton | 656k | +39 |
| 9 | Tim Archer | 680k | +31 |
| 10 | Matthew Morine | 820k | +36 |
| 11 | Grace Conversation | 864k | -7 |
| 12 | Craig Ford | 926k | NA |
| 13 | Mike Cope | 983k | -6 |
| 14 | Cecil Hook | 1.3m | -8 |
| 15 | John Mark Hicks | 1.3m | -7 |
| 16 | Trey Morgan | 1.7m | -5 |
| 17 | Patrick Mead | 1.9m | -3 |
| 18 | Darin Hamm | 1.9m | NA |
| 19 | Keith Lancaster | 2.0m | NA |
| 20 | Wes Woodell | 2.0m | +22 |
| 21 | Wade Hodges | 2.1m | -4 |
| 22 | John Dobbs | 2.4m | +23 |
| 23 | Toddblog | 2.5m | NA |
| 24 | Brian Nicklaus | 2.6m | NA |
| 25 | Tim Spivey | 2.7m | +16 |
| 26 | Gil Yoder | 2.8m | +6 |
| 27 | Larry James | 2.9m | -17 |
| 28 | Bobby Valentine | 3.0m | -13 |
| 29 | Alan Rouse | 3.2m | -12 |
| 30 | Roger Butner | 3.2m | NA |
| 31 | Adam Faughn | 3.3m | NA |
| 32 | Philip Cunningham | 3.5m | NA |
| 33 | Jim McGuiggan | 3.6m | -4 |
| 34 | Joshua Graves | 3.6m | NA |
| 35 | Phil Ware | 3.7m | -23 |
| 36 | Milton Stanley | 3.9m | -20 |
| 37 | Dallas Burdette | 3.9m | -19 |
| 38 | Keith Brenton | 4.1m | -11 |
| 39 | Ocular Fusion | 4.3m | -14 |
| 40 | Royce Ogle | 4.4m | -7 |
| 41 | Terry Laudette | 4.4m | -3 |
| 42 | Nick Gill | 4.5m | -18 |
| 43 | Jonathan Storment | 4.5m | 0 |
| 44 | Frank Bellizzi | 4.6m | NA |
| 45 | Political Cartel | 4.7m | -14 |
| 46 | Chris Gallagher | 4.7m | NA |
| 47 | Shane Coffman | 4.8m | NA |
| 48 | Kinney Mabry (preacherman) | 5.0m | -14 |
| 49 | Wade Tannehill | 5.0m | NA |
| 50 | Terry Rush | 5.2m | -13 |
| 51 | Jerry Starling | 5.6m | NA |
| 52 | Greg England | 5.6m | NA |
| 53 | Greg Kendall-Ball | 6.0m | NA |
| 54 | Danny Dodd | 6.4m | NA |
| 55 | Phil Sanders | 6.6m | -36 |
| 56 | Todd Deaver | 6.7m | -26 |
| 57 | Rex Butts | 7.0m | NA |
| 58 | Bill Williams | 7.4m | -30 |
About mattdabbs
Kingdom Living 
Thanks for taking the time to put this together. I’m more than a little suspicious of Alexa myself, but I don’t have a better alternative.
The secret of my success was a controversial series of posts on alcohol… and Jay Guin linking to that series! 🙂 The day he pointed people my way I had 5x the normal amount of traffic.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer
All I can say is WOW! I was humbled to even be on the list you produced in July, Matt. I have you to thank because after that list appeared my blog exploded in traffic. You are a great asset to the church and the blogging community.
Still, I feel like a boy among men! lol
Matt, I just wanted you to know that I have moved my blog from my old URL to a new one at http://ministerlane.wordpress.com
I have decided to link your site onto my blog. While I may not be Mitchell, I aspire to be like him one day (well, maybe…)
Lane,
Thanks for the URL update. I need to update my list. Hope things are well with you and your ministry.
Hi Matt,
I think you’ll find that Alexa ranks my blog pretty high. I’m not sure why as I only average about 100 hits a week! Of course, I’m on there just about every day and it obviously counts my visits, but it still seems crazy high. Do with it what you want.
http://www.ozziepete.wordpress.com
Appreciate your work, Matt… but mostly…appreciate you!
Bobby Ross reported that Tammy Ross has started her own blog—so maybe she’ll rocket to the top! Also, even though my blog (Higgaion, http://higgaion.heardworld.com) focuses mostly on academic matters, I wouldn’t mind being listed here among other Church of Christ bloggers (Alexa rank 747,631 worldwide). You’re quite right about Alexa, though—once you get into five-digit Alexa ranks, there’s really not that much difference in the big picture.
Christopher,
I will get the update in by tomorrow. I didn’t know about your blog. It looks great! I look forward to reading more. Not sure if I checked Bobby’s rank. I will take a look at that as well.
I’m still shocked that I am even on the list. I know how to increase traffic, and rankings, but I don’t want rankings to be a goal. I am not suggesting that those above me on the list are writing for traffic. I know most of them and rankings is not on their minds when they write posts.
I appreciate the love and acceptance by many on this list of blogs and websites even though I don’t usually fit the coC template.
There are some brilliant writers on this list and they make me want to do a better job of communicating. I plan to visit those I have not read before today.
Thanks for putting this together Matt.
Royce
Ha!
Yeah, I have no business being on that list. How in the world did that happen?
BTW, in what universe would my name be listed ahead of Jim McGuiggan’s for anything? 😉
Except height, of course…
Alexa may rank correctly, but it may not be the most revealing ranking. While New Wineskins comes in at about 3.0m and my blog at about 4.1m, Google Analytics says NW gets four times more visitors each month than I do. (And most of the rest of NW’s stats – internal bounce rate and viewing time, for instance – are a lot better, too!)
Matt,
Was looking for women’s names on this list … notta!
Got it – check #4!
Thanks for including my blog on the list, Matt! I appreciate what you do. 🙂
Matt,
Wow. I’m humbled to see my name anywhere near this list. May we all teach truth and glorify God through this medium!
Adam
Matt,
Thanks so much for the mention and for including Money Help For Christians. I honestly didn’t think I would be invited to the party because my topic is so worldly – HA! Thanks for your kind words.
I pray that these blogs will continue to make a positive difference for God’s Kingdom.
As for Alexa rank I think there is a lot lacking in their rankings. The more subscribers you have the lower your rank because those folks don’t typically visit your site. In addition Alexa does not measure the quality of a visit. That’s just my two cents on the topic.
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Laura Coppinger writes a very popular blog at HeavenlyHomemakers.com, with a pretty decent alexa ranking. I’d love to see her on this list, even though her blog is not quite the same “genre” as most on your list.
Got it
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HEY! I lost two spots in a day! what happened.
I’m not gonna count Dobbs b/c he hardly blogs anymore anyway, and the grace conversation is a “dialogue”, not a blog, plus Trey Morgan is a one-trick pony–he only blogs lists,
so can I keep telling people I am ranked #21??
(j/k)
It is a little arbitrary because as we add more blogs your rank may drop, not because you are getting less traffic than you used to but because there are more blogs on the list than there used to be.
Thank you so much for creating this list and for placing me on the list! I’m very honored!
i was just joking, hopefully there are more out there ranked higher than I am ranked. I know my daily avg more or less
Mr. Blog Prophet, if you’d post one in a while, you’d probably get a better ranking. 🙂
did you mean post one serious post in a while?
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From a study done by SEOmoz (data available at http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-blog-stats?source=pjn&subid=21181 )–
“Based on the evidence we’ve gathered here, it’s safe to say that no external metric, traffic prediction service or ranking system available on the web today provides any accuracy when compared with real numbers.”
Hey, Matt.
Thanks for the list. Also thought I’d point you to an excellent daily blog by Jennifer Gerhardt; she gets over 100 visits a day. It’s http://jlgerhardt.tumblr.com. Great writing, engaging vulnerability, and keen insight on God and his kingdom. Enjoy!
Justin,
That is going to be tough to figure out where she falls as Alexa is ranking tumblr rather than her particular site on tumblr. So it will be just about impossible to tell where she falls unless I can make an educated guess based on the traffic of the sites that get about that same amount of traffic. I will have a look again next time around and see what I can figure out.
Matt,
If the list is blogs by members of the Church of Christ, you might want to check out s8int.com/WordPress or their main website, s8int.com.
It’s not a “Church of Christ Blog”. But, I’m pretty sure the guy running it is CoC. The blog is about creationism, evolution, ancient history, etc. It is packed full of amazing stuff. Check it out.
Thanks for your list!!
Thanks Marty!