Brian Gongol
Next update: On or about June 3, 2013. The most recent ratings are always found at EconDirectory.com.
The ratio of each site's page views or visits to that of the top-rated site is used to illustrate a relative level of influence (among visitors to business and economics weblogs) compared to that of the top 200 daily newspapers in the US (among all newspaper readers).
Example:
| Site | Average daily pageviews | Pageview ratio | |
| Blog A | 200 | 200 / 200 = | 1.000 |
| Blog B | 100 | 100 / 200 = | 0.500 |
| Blog C | 80 | 80 / 200 = | 0.400 |
Now, we compare these to the (old) circulations of some of the top 200 daily newspapers in the US:
| Newspaper | Daily circulation | Circulation ratio | |
| USA Today | 2,528,437 | 2,528,437 / 2,528,437 = | 1.0000 |
| New York Times | 1,683,855 | 1,683,855 / 2,528,437 = | 0.6660 |
| Los Angeles Times | 1,231,318 | 1,231,318 / 2,528,437 = | 0.4870 |
| Chicago Tribune | 957,212 | 957,212 / 2,528,437 = | 0.3786 |
| New York Daily News | 795,153 | 795,153 / 2,528,437 = | 0.3145 |
Thus, by pageviews, Blog A is the USA Today of the economics/business blogosphere, since it gets more pageviews each day than any other site in the same category. By pageviews, Blog B is the the Los Angeles Times of the economics/business blogosphere, and Blog C is roughly the Chicago Tribune of the economics blogosphere.
The rankings and comparisons are repeated on the basis of daily visits, as well:
| Site | Average daily visits | Visit ratio | |
| Blog A | 150 | 150 / 150 = | 1.0000 |
| Blog B | 100 | 100 / 150 = | 0.6667 |
| Blog C | 50 | 50 / 150 = | 0.3333 |
Thus, by visits, Blog A is the USA Today of the economics/business blogosphere, since it gets more visits each day than any other comparable site. By daily visits, Blog B is the New York Times and Blog C is roughly the New York Daily News of the economics blogosphere.
This comparison is helpful because no one would suggest that the New York Times is merely two-thirds as influential as USA Today -- even though it claims nearly a million fewer readers. Thus, a site getting just half the traffic of the top-rated site in the category may still be very influential in its own right; the newspaper rankings are intended solely to illustrate that fact.
These rankings are based solely upon the websites' publicly-available traffic logs; sites without those logs clearly available for public viewing are not included in these rankings, though they are listed in the general directory.