Last year I looked at the frequent flyer and travel sites getting the most traffic. I also looked at this same data the year before. I noted that ‘most frequently visited’ isn’t the same as best, and many of you had strong opinions on that!
In fact, I agree with you: the order of this list isn’t close to my own list of favorite or best sites, but for those curious about a best estimate of who sees the most traffic here’s a list that ranks 14 popular websites.
Some caveats:
- Data is from SimilarWeb, which I think does a good job with estimates overall but is going to be wrong in some cases, perhaps even wildly at times, but is still useful for order-of-magnitude.
- This is looking just at March 2025 data – the most recent month available. I compare it to March 2024 data, which I posted last year, and left in March 2023 as well for comparison. March may have been a good or bad month for any given site this year, just as it may have been last year – these are limited data points.
- I picked a handful of sites, if you feel others should be on here or compared you can look them up yourselves without a Similarweb account.
With those limitations out of the way, here are 14 sites I checked, and SimilarWeb’s March site visit estimates:
| Website | YoY % | Mar-25 | Mar-24 | Mar-23 | ||||
| The Points Guy | -21% | 9,387,000 | 11,900,000 | 13,100,000 | ||||
| View From The Wing | 47% | 7,521,000 | 5,100,000 | 6,500,000 | ||||
| Doctor of Credit | 17% | 5,827,000 | 5,000,000 | 5,200,000 | ||||
| Dan’s Deals | -31% | 3,531,000 | 5,100,000 | 5,500,000 | ||||
| FlyerTalk | -25% | 3,314,000 | 4,400,000 | 2,800,000 | ||||
| Upgraded Points | 18% | 3,308,000 | 2,800,000 | 5,600,000 | ||||
| One Mile at a Time | -29% | 2,913,000 | 4,100,000 | 5,200,000 | ||||
| Frequent Miler | 36% | 2,317,000 | 1,700,000 | 853,000 | ||||
| Head For Points | 3% | 1,645,000 | 1,600,000 | 1,100,000 | ||||
| Loyalty Lobby | -7% | 817,923 | 884,200 | 1,200,000 | ||||
| Live and Let’s Fly | -45% | 710,507 | 1,300,000 | 1,200,000 | ||||
| Paddle Your Own Kanoo | -53% | 612,192 | 1,300,000 | 2,100,000 | ||||
| Nomadic Matt | -48% | 567,427 | 1,100,000 | 1,500,000 | ||||
| Thrifty Traveler | -74% | 547,260 | 2,100,000 | 2,600,000 |
It was shocking last year how many sites lost traffic – sometimes substantially less! Google made major changes in late August 2023, and then again in September 2023. They began privileging the biggest brands and Reddit far more in results.
Some sites have somewhat recovered from the traffic drop. For instance, the SEO experts at Upgraded Points have brought that site part of the way back. Others have continued to suffer. This isn’t a judgment on quality. It’s de-prioritization by Google.
I’d say anyone on this list, writing for themselves or as a group of 3 or 4 people, is just really impressive. My must-reads are One Mile at Time, Frequent Miler, and Live and Let’s Fly though I scan the headlines of just about every site reporting anything related to miles, points and travel and I’ll click through anything that seems like it’s something I should know or be aware of.
If these numbers are accurate, the continued strong performance by Frequent Miler is a real feather in the hat to that great team. And it’s great that Doctor of Credit’s traffic hasn’t declined, either.
Of course, if anyone knows better publicly-available data than SimilarWeb, I’d certainly be curious!
I think writing about credit card and hotel deals is going to have limited interest. Now all the drama that goes with flying????? Drama sells when it comes to social media.
That being said I’ve noticed engagement on FT is down. FT founded by Randy Peterson was the first big site dedicated to travel stories. It used to be go away for a couple of days and there would be pages and pages of unread threads. Today it’s a page maybe two. Possibly there’s a limit to the gate agent/flight attendant done me wrong/I didn’t get a pre departure beverage/why aren’t my upgrades clearing stories that one wants to read.
How do you explain the drop of over 10% from March 2024 to March 2025?
As a result of the administration, you’ve been forced to temper the right wing rhetoric and have been rewarded with not just increased readers, but also a more valuable demographic. Nicely done!
well done, Gary.
clearly the number of comments doesn’t translate into the success of a web site.
the only real surprise is how badly the bottom half of the list is doing. Size matters in your business just as it does for airlines. Some folks will be liquidating their activities before long.
Upgradedpoints has three profiles of former employees on its website, with widely varying numbers of “published” articles (from four to over a hundred). It’s curious.
Frequent Miler is far and away the best. Is more high level than most but much higher quality (and more honest content). One Mile at a Time is best for reviews, especially for flight products and lounges. Those are tier 1 and tier 2 for me and no others come close.
Anyone else getting a case of schadenfreude that The Points (Shill) Guy is seeing their numbers dwindle?
I am surprised that “Live and Let’s Fly” is only -45%. Maybe they made a mistake. It should have been -95%. The guy who hosts/manages that site only writes about United Airlines (one can easily tell after reading few articles that he likes UA so you only see wonderful articles of that carrier), and… coffee. So biased, not having any value, and quite boring. Oh, and that “coffee guy” thinks that he is the smartest person on earth, and forgets that readers might have Ph.D’s, Masters, J.D. as well.
FT is down because of the moderators. In most forums (hello AC), negative comments about the company result in bans by mods and their gang of company shills.
Re: The Points Guy. When I try to read an article there it says “ Enter your email to continue reading”. Usually, I do not bother.
I remember before Red Ventures was involved with The Points Guy. You could get special emails from Brian Kelly for an annual fee. One time, he sent out an email that Singapore Air had changed their reservation system and accidentally allowed their whole frequent flyer availability to all partners over the weekend. I grabbed a round trip first class flight to Asia using United Miles (140K miles for a round trip) and it was great.
During this trip, I asked if I could get a picture of a stewardess. She said, “Oh, you want a picture with us girls.” A few seconds later, all the first class cabin stewardesses posed around me with smiles, while the steward took the picture. It is still one of my favorite pictures.
Many of my friends do not understand the the frequent flyer game, but that experience is one of the reasons I play it.
I have stopped visiting the points guy website for about 8 years since I noticed he wrote in favor of whoever paid him whether it was the banks for credit cards or the airlines. His content was full of garbage and biased. Million Mile Secrets was great until the founders got divorced. One mile at a time is slowly turning into the points guy ever since he upgraded his website. I am not surprised at viewfromthewing’s gain in popularity. Gary has remained relatively the same in his travel blog.
Congrats on the big boom in hits, Gary! Keep up the awesome work.
I’m just a lazy person in general so I don’t really go on other sites unless my browser algorithm recommends something that looks interesting. But I’ll make an effort take regular look at your must-read recommendations, thank you sir.
@Parnel Completely agree. The moderators are typical hall monitors from the past that would run to the Vice Principle’s office if Bobby Gordon was 3 seconds late to History Class. COVID was the worst.
Shame to see The Points Guy is still top – absolutely terrible site. But glad more readers are wising up and migrating to better sources. Related – I recently found out the same venture capital company that owns TPG bought Lonely Planet in 2021 and have absolutely destroyed the once cherished guide books. Their new guide books aren’t worth the paper they’re written on!
Congratulations, Gary! You work hard and deserve the success.
LALF wrote today about losing views due to his political writing topics, but it seems like the biggest culprit is the Google Algorithm.
T is an idiot, though. He hardly focuses only on United. Today he has an American A321 review and a Turkish Lounge review and yesterday it was an Air France 777 review. He’s also the only major blogger that sometimes flies economy class which is a little bit refreshing.
I’m more than happy to accept Gary’s explanation at face value — that Google’s algorithms have changed (yet again) and are now placing more emphasis on X, Y, and Z versus A, B, and C. Those changes will indeed mess up your SEO…but it shouldn’t for long. That is, people whose job it is to know SEO will (usually) quickly correct/adjust to the new changes and the numbers should go back up…but they haven’t/don’t.
That said, the overall numbers have steadily declined, from 53.3 million hits in March 2023 to 48.4 million in March 2024 to 43.0 million in March of this year. That is NOT a Google algorithm; that is an overall decline in readership of TEN MILLION. Have people figured it all out and no longer need the information put out by the various blogs? Have people simply decided not to travel anymore? What *really* is behind such a significant decline? (It can’t all be chalked up to recycled stories.)
Personally, I am down to reading emails from two bloggers, and I find myself increasingly frustrated with one of them. (Do I really care about flying in J to Ulaanbaator on MIAT, for example?)
The Points Guy has really screwed up with their followers. By asking readers to enter their email addresses repeatedly to read their blogs is quite annoying. Couple that with the reduction in blogs released, I dont really go to their website any longer.
InternetBrands/FlyerTalk have seen their traffic jump up when VFTW refers to FlyerTalk.
Nowadays they are concerned their traffic will either not grow as much or drop as the British Airways loyalty program becomes way less attractive. The BA forum is the most heavily visited forum on FlyerTalk and also the most cliquish historically.
Long time, parnel.
Governments are subject to regulatory capture by companies subject to regulation. FlyerTalk is subject to forum moderation capture by corporate apologists and/or by government apologists.
Hi George Romney. Did you know the FT Moderators put MSPeconomist in their cross-hairs. They don’t like her posting a lot. Actually they are wary of anyone posting more than the moderators themselves, especially if the regular members aren’t knee-jerk kiss-ups to whatever the moderators say about travel.
Frequent Miler is the best because they stay on topic. No click bait and no politics. No stories about someone wearing a pin or hat. I bet “Trump” has never been in any post. Just good sound advice and entertainment. OMAAT and Live and Let Fly post too much off topic garbage.
Congrats, Gary!
Well-done and well-deserved on View from the Wing. It’s actually great community here. Thank you all as well for commenting and exchanging ideas as well. I enjoy it, thoroughly.
For credit cards and bank bonuses, I appreciate what William and Chuck do over at Doctor of Credit. I also think highly of Ben at One Mile at a Time, especially for his explainers on certain topics (very thorough), and Matthew at Live and Let’s Fly, as those two occasionally ‘break news’ on matters related to this hobby/industry.
It’s also wild how FlyerTalk has diminished. @GUWonder is right; FT has become like 95% British Airways–that’s a bit odd. Eh, it was fun while it lasted.
However, I couldn’t agree more with @Daniel A and @Josh–I’m no longer a fan of The Points Guy; they couldn’t handle comments (lame), and were shilling way too hard for the mega-corps. Like, they still promote historically bad sign-up bonuses, just so they can get their cut on the referrals. Not cool, guys. That’s a nope for me, dawg.
@Uncle Jeff — Bah! Gary appears to do whatever he wants with his site, and it seems to be working. I don’t see much ‘tempering’ around here; rather, I see actual free speech, within reason. There’s a robust, respectful exchange of ideas on here. Yes, some heated debate and frequent banter, too. That’s all healthy.
I’m shocked that TPG is still at #1. That site has gone absolutely trash in the last couple of years.
Frequent Miler had a “2024 State of the Business Report” post that would suggest their numbers are significantly and directionally off — they reported their 2024 traffic was down slightly from 2023, and that they were hovering around 15 million annual views. (Caveat, of course, is these aren’t apples-to-apples time periods.)
And, of course, elephant in the room, but you obviously know whether your numbers are correct or not!
Curious if TikTok, Instagram, Youtube, etc. have impacted travel blogs as well and shifted audiences to more vlogs/social media for travel info.
@jason it really is certainly much to do with the algo changes @ google which have decimated publishers/blogs of all topics. it’s no longer an SEO landscape as you reference to fix. it is much to do with the real impact of AI Overviews whereas with a growing number of searches, google is using AI to answer your query on google’s page rather than passing along as referral traffic. no less interest in travel. no less interest in the topics, but more an absolute change in how information is answered. google and bing are going from indexing the internet for you to being the internet. thanks for still recognizing that there is great value from the keyboards of travelers.
@randy petersen — Those changes that you described are becoming more and more apparent. By the way, are you ‘the’ Randy Petersen, or are you just using his name here? If you are actually ‘he,’ first of all, thank you for what you’ve done for us–seriously, you (and others like Gary) helped build this community of frequent flyers, credit card aficionado, etc. Again, only if it is actually you, with respect, how do you feel about the current state of FlyerTalk–like, from my perspective, the current ‘owner,’ Internet Brands, doesn’t seem to have tried very hard in recent years–Reddit subgroups have really filled the gap. No obligation to comment, just curious.
Congrats on the traffic, Gary. I agree Frequent Miler grows because they work so hard for what they do. On that same note, how is LALF down 45%?! That doesn’t make any sense. Matthew covers everything and reviews everything.
The AI answers coming up when doing Google searches are definitely eating into click-thru traffic at times. But lazy people are at risk of getting bad answers and then losing out in ways by counting too much on such answers.
Google AI answers are too often wrong about even basic facts about US government programs that are on government websites, so i take those answers as “distrust until verified”. In that regard answers from a real person or iterative answers derived from social exchanges can be superior to Google’s AI responses at the top.
1990, based on “lingo tells” — as the FlyerTalk Moderators on AE/alias detection duty have called it — it’s indeed from the founder of FlyerTalk. I share in your thankfulness for what he has done in the travel space and what it has meant for me and my near and dear ones.
Glad to see I m not alone in noticing the decline of FT based on the moderators.
Interesting about the BA forum, I would’ve sworn AC forum had the most bullies and shills.
Ben over there is taking it pretty hard.
He saw the decline coming, turned every article into a pi7uing contest thinking that would help his readership and now can’t stand anyone to tell him that he screwed up.
as with most industries, there is contraction.
The decline of Flyertalk is a little sad. I agree with those above that the moderators are too heavy-handed. For me, it started with Covid, when if you posted something they didn’t like — perhaps that the data showed Covid was not very dangerous if you were younger, so there was no reason to fear travel — they would delete your post. Now, the moderators delete what they want and merge everthing to oblivion. It discourages participation.
Perhaps due to the google algos, I come across more reddit travel posts. I get the impression that the “younger folks” like reddit forums more than, say, flyertalk. There’s often useful stuff there that I don’t find elsewhere.
Well done, Gary.
It’s difficult to believe that FlyerTalk is the new MySpace…
VFTW is my daily go-to site; used to rely on Scott’s for the occasional $199 RT flash sale to Alaska & Hawaii or $399 RT to Europe.
Agree with @Mike. Freq Miler and VFTW are the best.
In addition, I still give Ben good traffic, visit the DoC often to skim headlines but lots of irrelevant things to me and I still frequent FlyerTalk.
The one void that remains is that no one has stepped in to fill the GCgalore gap. I disagreed with that chap’s politics but he was a good chap.
Gary I agree with your must reads along with yours. But why are you even dignifying that UP site with a mention or even being considered a resource.
It’s a no value add content farm, no wonder Google is showing more AI results.
@1990 yeah reddit is really getting a lot of community for mileage program talk. Same even for Facebook groups. Lots of engagement, more ‘friendly’ to newbies, filling a lot of old flyertalk gaps but still the savviest tips are on flyertalk.
LALF posted an article saying that he has absolutely hated the last 100 days – even though the current administration has not been in office for 100 days.
He intentionally turned his site into political commentary.
It cost him 45% of his readership.
Ben over at OMAAT has done the same thing – at the cost of over 1 million readers/month.
many airlines and many other companies learned that it makes no economic sense to alienate half of your readers because you can’t stand the current administration – regardless of which team is in charge.
Sadly, some travel site operators aren’t smart enough to learn from other people’s mistakes.
Gary manages to offend alot of people but he generally is an equal opportunity offender.
@GUWonder: the FlyerTalk decline has many factors, but I agree the nonstop posts from users such as MSPeconomist are off-putting to many readers who have to sort thru so much nonsense. Personally, I’ve stopped posting due to moderators that (true or not) seem to be paid by the brands to patrol for negative posts. Reddit feels like it has more current info and is easier to search, but FlyerTalk remains an amazing archive of information. Randy is missed over there it seems.
Just curious Gary, why isn’t my son’s travel blog listed? He knows everything about making a profitable airline business. He was invited to be on the launch of the new La Premiere, but there was a misunderstanding with the authorities about Timothy coming within 50ft of Ed Bastian for the third time.
I used to only read TPG up until they decided to remove the comment section on their website which was usually more informative or had better advice than the articles themselves, calling out TPG’s bias. I stopped visiting the site for that decision alone. Somehow I found this site along with One Mile through the aviation community and have been here ever since.
Momma.
as usual, you are clueless
I don’t make money on any travel blog.
It was obvious from last November that some people would be incapable of making it through the next 4 years without harming themselves and the numbers that Gary released prove it.
I still write for Seeking Alpha and one of my latest articles – long before the tariff mess – highlighted how sensitive the United fan kids are to any criticism. I reduced UAL to a hold and a couple of them went actually nuts. The fact that UAL is down 27% YTD despite a 20% runup yesterday is proof that some people are simply incapable of seeing the reality that others can see.
of course, what no one writes changes reality. They just kick and scream but the world continues to go on. The administration was voted in for a four year term. Some bloggers will tick off half of their audience because they aren’t capable of understanding that their opinions are offensive to half of their US audience. If they want to harm themselves and their own income, there isn’t much that any of us can do.
I also haven’t been on the points Guy for a while
I expect that OMAAT’s numbers will improve now that Lucky has sent Timmy Dunn to the corner for a timeout.
I’m happier reading it now.
Jack
Ben’s readership isn’t down for any reason other than he decided to turn every article that he could into a political shouting match. No commenter can move a site’s readership by a million readers per month
Ben continues to take responsibility for his poor decisions and elevates Tim’s presence even when he is not there
It is notable that multiple readers decry Ben’s politicization and his decision to censor people who speak truth that Ben doesn’t like.
Matthew realized the cost of his decision to speak out. Ben blames others for his demise
Since a few have brought it up, on the relative ‘politicization’ of nearly all commentary these days–it’s inevitable and unavoidable, because it affects everything and everyone. As I’ve said repeatedly on here in other posts: People, culture, money, and power–that’s life; that’s politics. So, instead of seeking to mute or censor those you disagree with, try engaging or ignoring them. Notable exceptions include threats of violence, doxing, and hate speech. I try to call it out when I see it. There is a ‘paradox of tolerance’ which some seek to abuse. Otherwise, we absolutely should be able to share our ideas, banter, passionately debate, and respectfully disagree with each other here and elsewhere. Ultimately, these are privately owned websites, so Gary and the others can do however they wish, within reason. And if people don’t like it, we can go somewhere else. Thank you, as always, for hosting the rest of us.
@Tim Dunn — I’m with you on your comments about these sites. I’m grateful for your insights.
On the markets, I’m questioning whether fundamentals even matter anymore. Beforehand, yes, especially on a micro-level, we could analyze a company (or sector) that may be undervalued, make the right investments, and earn while they thrive. But, these days, on a macro-level, the President is unilaterally manipulating markets, seemingly to benefit his insiders.
At-best He recklessly and at-worst He intentionally caused this historic ‘dump’ (following his unilateral initial haphazard ‘liberation day’ tariffs), then a massive ‘pump’ (as of yesterday, ‘backing off’ for 90-days, except against China). I suspect another ‘dump’ soon. Rinse and repeat.
Such manipulation and an insider trading used to be ‘illegal,’ but I guess we don’t prosecute Presidents or white-collar criminals. For the rest of us, most do not dabble in ‘options’ and cannot correctly time these puts or calls, so we’re just strapped-in on the equivalent of an amusement park ‘Double Shot’ ride as our employer-managed 401(k) index funds shoot up and down. How can an individual or a company plan anything around all this!
“Ben continues to take responsibility for his poor decisions and elevates Tim’s presence even when he is not there”
Did you just refer to yourself in the third person?…….. Hahahahahaha.
Several comments:
Between Gary’s post and Frequent Miler’s post, I decided to get the Lifemiles Cardless Credit Card and join their membership program.
Frequent Miler put me onto Seat Aero, which netting me a first class ticket on ANA for my girlfriend HND-ORD (using expiring Singapore Air Miles) and a first class ticket for me HND-JFK using Lifemiles this year 2025 alone. (Read: about $30K in luxury value. Gratitude from my girlfriend which is priceless). Frequent Miler put me onto Points.Yeah which is also great.
Gary follows airlines news, which is really good. I fly a lot and I like to keep up with those things.
If Gary had not discussed the importance of the frequent flyer programs to airline company profits, I never would have noticed. Also, after Gary’s comment about LUV, I purchase some puts, which are in the money (LOL for now). And I am thinking about buying more puts. I know I am shallow, but I really enjoy his exploitive posts such as naked girl in airport, Vietnam Bikini Airlines, Philippines dancing stewardess. I have never been lucky enough to actually see an attractive bikini clad stewardess or a naked girl in the airport, but I enjoy thinking about it. Even his negativity on certain airlines is good, because I have been forewarned.
It is a pity about the decline in Points Guy. At one time (like years ago), it was my go to. The content there is very vanilla and bland. Does not help much now.
In my view FlyerTalk is down because they eliminated most of the “Trending Discussions” view from the widget on their home page. You can no longer “See All” of the trending discussions from their Trending Discussions widget. They only show you the few top posts. I used to find many interesting threads before they kneecapped it. Now I would have to waste tons of time searching through their forums myself to find all the interesting threads they used to highlight before they gutted Trending Discussions – and I am not going to do that..
They had some rationale for why they did it. I never understood it. Something about Google search results impacting their ad revenue if they let people go straight to the interesting posts.