This weekend is Memorial Day weekend, and here in New York City it’s a point in the year that always seems to me to be a time of transition. I think I get this impression because, quite amazingly, this weekend like clockwork normally brings us our first taste of summer heat. Saturday the temperature reached 76°, Sunday it reached 83°, and today reached 89°.
The change in seasons in NYC can be quite abrupt. I was wearing long underwear a few weeks ago, and today I’m writing this article in shorts and a tank top. I do love the variety of seasons that we get to experience here!
A time of transition can be a good moment to pause and assess any number of different things. It’s kind of fitting then, to review the traffic data for the CAD blogs within the blogosphere, and then create a Top Ten CAD Blogs As Of May 2011 list, from that data.
I’ll parse through the myriad of CAD blogs and rank them according to traffic, by using www.alexa.com‘s Global Traffic Rank. Alexa explains that their traffic rank is a measure of a site’s popularity. The rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pagviews over the past 3 months. The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews is ranked #1.
In other words, Alexa’s #1 rank is the best-ranked site and # several million being NOT the best-ranked site. I know Alexa keeps records for at least 30,000,000 sites on the WWW.
As I already mentioned, there exists a ton of different CAD blogs, so I’ll narrow the scope of this post down to covering two categories of CAD blogs. Those will be, Autodesk CAD blogs and non-Autodesk CAD blogs that are general in nature and/or primarily cover standard AutoCAD.
In the future I’d like to do another post on non-Autodesk CAD blogs that cover specific software. For example, inventor blogs, civil 3D blogs, and etc. Therefore, if you have ideas for software or niche specific CAD blogs, then please let me know about them.
The websites that qualified for my data summary herein:
- Had an Alexa listing.
- Were websites that were structured primarily as a blog.
Lastly, if I’ve missed your website, then my apologies! I plan on compiling this list again on or about the one year anniversary of this post, so please let me know about your site and I’ll include it the next time around.
Top Ten CAD Blogs As Of May 2011 | General CAD Blogs
Of the forty four (44) general CAD blogs that I surveyed, thirty nine (39) had an Alexa rank. In tabular form, the Alexa Global Traffic Ranks are as follows:
| General CAD Blogs | Alexa Global Traffic Rank |
|---|---|
| 1. deelip.com | 304,406 |
| 2. blog.novedge.com | 359,282 |
| 3. cadblog.net | 402,487 |
| 4. blog.jtbworld.com | 419,361 |
| 5. worldcadaccess.typepad.com | 500,531 |
| 6. dailyautocad.com | 584,061 |
| 7. rcd.typepad.com/rcd | 667,552 |
| 8. designandmotion.net | 913,304 |
| 9. cadpanacea.com | 968,201 |
| 10. cadinsider.typepad.com | 1,038,458 |
| 11. blog.cadnauseam.com | 1,233,507 |
| 12. caddmanager.com/CMB | 1,265,876 |
| 13. thecadgeek.com | 1,624,323 |
| 14. cadsetterout.com | 1,654,102 |
| 15. evanyares.com | 2,013,307 |
| 16. kungfudrafter.com | 2,172,328 |
| 17. otb.manusoft.com | 3,037,607 |
| 18. themadcadder.blogs.com | 3,110,767 |
| 19. bethscadblog.blogspot.com | 3,501,923 |
| 20. mistressofthedorkness.blogspot.com | 4,365,765 |
| 21. opendesignproject.org | 4,408,885 |
| 22. cadtoolbox.com | 4,809,756 |
| 23. mikescadblog.com | 6,339,456 |
| 24. lazydrafter.blogspot.com | 6,570,224 |
| 25. autocadder.blogspot.com | 6,760,523 |
| 26. caddhelp.blogspot.com | 6,949,802 |
| 27. cad-a-blog.com | 7,036,703 |
| 28. hyperpics.blogs.com | 7,380,144 |
| 29. cadshack.blogspot.com | 7,756,477 |
| 30. autocadblockdesign.blogspot.com | 7,952,969 |
| 31. autocad-for-civils.blogspot.com | 8,645,217 |
| 32. solidmasters.com | 9,327,319 |
| 33. cadingandcoding.blogspot.com | 11,490,109 |
| 34. knowingwhatyoudontknow.blogspot.com | 11,813,659 |
| 35. cadblog.info | 12,377,515 |
| 36. besidethecursor.integr-8.com | 12,543,852 |
| 37. cad-drafting-corner.blogspot.com | 13,162,507 |
| 38. rockmaster.wordpress.com | 16,062,445 |
| 39. cadtrainingblog.com | 19,834,986 |
The Global Traffic Rank data from the table above, looks like this in XY graph format:
Comparing the amount of traffic, in terms of percentages, looks like this in pie chart format:
Comparing the amount of traffic, in terms of percentages, looks like this in column graph format:
The big winner in the General CAD Blogs category was Deelip Menezes’ blog www.deelip.com (see image below).
Top Ten CAD Blogs As Of May 2011 | Autodesk CAD Blogs
Of the fifty nine (59) Autodesk CAD blogs that I surveyed, fifty one (51) had an Alexa rank. In tabular form, the Alexa Global Traffic Ranks are as follows:
| Autodesk CAD Blogs | Alexa Global Traffic Rank |
|---|---|
| 1. autodesk.blogs.com | 347,818 |
| 2. labs.blogs.com | 650,043 |
| 3. dwf.blogs.com | 749,186 |
| 4. geospatial.blogs.com | 968,570 |
| 5. revitclinic.typepad.com | 1,127,356 |
| 6. through-the-interface.typepad.com | 1,177,811 |
| 7. lynn.blogs.com | 1,234,408 |
| 8. heidihewett.blogs.com | 1,440,896 |
| 9. mayastation.typepad.com | 1,524,394 |
| 10. thebuildingcoder.typepad.com | 1,753,148 |
| 11. ltunlimited.typepad.com | 1,964,104 |
| 12. jamiesjewels.typepad.com | 2,064,578 |
| 13. underthehood-autodesk.typepad.com | 2,555,605 |
| 14. autodeskmfg.typepad.com | 2,775,142 |
| 15. bimandbeam.typepad.com | 3,030,252 |
| 16. geospatialfrance.typepad.com | 3,236,379 |
| 17. inthemachine-autodesk.typepad.com | 3,403,202 |
| 18. withoutanet.typepad.com | 3,434,006 |
| 19. beingcivil.typepad.com | 3,958,397 |
| 20. inside-the-system.typepad.com | 4,026,370 |
| 21. dux.typepad.com | 4,035,557 |
| 22. petekelsey.typepad.com | 4,230,901 |
| 23. whatamesh.typepad.com | 4,524,524 |
| 24. insidethefactory.typepad.com | 4,821,210 |
| 25. modthemachine.typepad.com | 4,983,611 |
| 26. inventor-ru.typepad.com | 5,420,139 |
| 27. crackingthevault.typepad.com | 5,543,195 |
| 28. bimontherocks.typepad.com | 5,771,858 |
| 29. in-the-pipes.typepad.com | 6,328,953 |
| 30. geospatialnavigator.typepad.com | 7,491,335 |
| 31. ellipsis-autodesk.typepad.com | 8,001,211 |
| 32. fromthegroundup.typepad.com | 8,086,416 |
| 33. bimblog.typepad.com | 8,246,644 |
| 34. atlandsend.typepad.com | 8,550,269 |
| 35. topobaseinsiders.typepad.com | 9,020,335 |
| 36. doddsandends.typepad.com | 9,455,425 |
| 37. engineeringeducation.typepad.com | 11,095,385 |
| 38. bimapps.typepad.com | 11,336,217 |
| 39. revit-pl.typepad.com | 11,552,428 |
| 40. adt_blog.typepad.com | 12,205,317 |
| 41. philbernstein.typepad.com | 14,596,721 |
| 42. justonesandzeros.typepad.com | 15,480,634 |
| 43. upandready.typepad.com | 15,942,242 |
| 44. morphorm.typepad.com | 16,601,093 |
| 45. civilfrance.typepad.com | 19,938,677 |
| 46. cad-botequim.typepad.com | 22,191,274 |
| 47. familyjewels.typepad.com | 23,741,799 |
| 48. structurebim.typepad.com | 27,453,677 |
| 49. classroomconnection.typepad.com | 27,668,545 |
| 50. gisexchange.typepad.com | 28,059,832 |
| 51. cadngis.blogspot.com | 29,029,298 |
The Global Traffic Rank data from the table above, looks like this in XY graph format:
Comparing the amount of traffic, in terms of percentages, looks like this in pie chart format:
Comparing the amount of traffic, in terms of percentages, looks like this in column graph format:
The big winner in the Autodesk CAD blog category was Shaan Hurley’s blog https://autodesk.blogs.com/ (see image below).
Top Ten CAD Blogs As Of May 2011 | General CAD Blogs and Autodesk CAD Blogs Mixed
Originally I was going to create one data set of mixed results between the Autodesk CAD blogs and the independent CAD blogs, but thought that the Autodesk bloggers would crush the independent bloggers, so I separated the two data sets. It turns out that the independent bloggers did better than just hold their own! A number of independent CAD blogs had better Alexa rankings than most of the Autodesk CAD blogs. That was a shocker to me, but perhaps it shouldn’t have been! In light of this, here’s a table of the top ten CAD blogs, when the data sets are combined:
| General CAD Blogs and Autodesk CAD Blogs Mixed | Alexa Global Traffic Rank |
|---|---|
| 1. deelip.com | 304,406 |
| 2. autodesk.blogs.com (Autodesk) | 347,818 |
| 3. blog.novedge.com | 359,282 |
| 4. cadblog.net | 402,487 |
| 5. blog.jtbworld.com | 419,361 |
| 6. worldcadaccess.typepad.com | 500,531 |
| 7. dailyautocad.com | 584,061 |
| 8. labs.blogs.com (Autodesk) | 650,043 |
| 9. rcd.typepad.com/rcd | 667,552 |
| 10. dwf.blogs.com (Autodesk) | 749,186 |
Conclusion
So there you have it! The Top Ten CAD Blogs As Of May 2011, for the General and Autodesk categories, along with the Mixed results.
p.s. This post is the kick-off article of my brand new blog here on draftingservices.com. I hope you enjoyed it, and I welcome you back anytime!