Most frequently visited isn’t the same as best, and this list in order wouldn’t be close to my own estimation of best, but for those curious about a best estimate of which frequent flyer and travel websites see 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 2023 data – the most recent month available.
- I simply picked a handful of sites, if you feel others should be on here or compared you can look them up yourselves without an account.
With those limitations out of the way, here are 14 sites I checked, in order of SimilarWeb’s March 2023 site visit estimates:
| The Points Guy | 13,100,000 | |
| View From The Wing | 6,500,000 | |
| Upgraded Points | 5,600,000 | |
| Dan’s Deals | 5,500,000 | |
| One Mile at a Time | 5,200,000 | |
| Doctor of Credit | 5,200,000 | |
| FlyerTalk | 2,800,000 | |
| Thrifty Traveler | 2,600,000 | |
| Paddle Your Own Kanoo | 2,100,000 | |
| Nomadic Matt | 1,500,000 | |
| Loyalty Lobby | 1,200,000 | |
| Live and Let’s Fly | 1,200,000 | |
| Head For Points | 1,100,000 | |
| Frequent Miler | 853,000 |
I’d say anyone on this list, writing for themselves or as a group of 3 or 4 people, is pretty impressive. Of these, I’d say that my must-reads are One Mile at Time and Frequent Miler 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 anyone knows better publicly-available data than SimilarWeb, I’d certainly be curious!
@gary: Some are “readonly”, and some “read/write”. For example FlyerTalk just answered a question I had and solved long-lingering problem merging Avios points. As a rule, can’t ask questions on many of these sites.
there is no way FT is only at 2.8m.
If this list had anything to do with quality, first and last place would be swapped.
Brutus, absolutely.
You can see a summary of many of these sites at milesfeed dot com.
So the price per click for Red Ventures must be much higher than some of the non-RV sites.
Several years ago I used to regularly do this comparison for every blog on BoardingArea and several other sites as well. I agree that Similarweb is a decent proxy for traffic, at least for something like this.
Doctor of Credit and especially Dans Deals are not exactly travel sites, but I’m surprised the low position for FlyerTalk – is that overall views or unique visitors? Does that even include their forum? I wonder how many of their tech savvy users come visit with ad blocker – perhaps 50% – and that affects the numbers
PS For context, TripAdvisor is 169M 🙂
The power of self-promotion: Is it not amazing that TPG has twice the traffic of the next most “visited” site…?
Being strongly opinionated, like this site can be, does not seem to hurt either, especially when there are counterpoints in this space that enhance content quality… 🙂
Traffic-wise, FT should be at the top and running away with it. However, one would need to know the methodology (i.e., what exactly was measured) to have a better sense of what the ranking means.
Yeah Gleff!! Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
DoC – fantastic.
Frequent Miler – a really strong blog/podcast/youtube/insta etc bunch of guys and gal. FM has become a must read.
Sorry, Flyertalk is so mid-2000s.
TPG – Sigh. (Barnam was right).
For what it’s worth, i’m not that surprised by Flyertalk being so low. Great group of folks on there but the navigation is trickier than most other sites and it seems, in my opinion, to be more pilot-centric than some other sites.
I’m curious where airliners.net is in this ranking since many aviation sites are apt to write an article about ~45 minutes after someone posts an obscure article with new information there. aka. seems to be a place where many website owners find some of their breaking news.
Gary is to be congratulated. He has an audience. He serves it well. And, the numbers reflect there is strong demand for his content . . . one major demographic being podiatrists.
For myself, I find less and less value from the sites geared for mass consumption. I find more and more value from direct interaction with other hobbyists on the private limited-membership discussion boards.
Of these blogs, the way I think of it is Gary is the AA one, Matthew is the UA one. Who covers DL?
My top 3 are live and let fly, omaat and view from the wing. 🙂
Don’t visit pointsguy anymore really since the comments section closed.
Enjoy FT, especially when have issue to resolve.
Another site should be rename All About Me All the Time. Seems mainly to exist to get kudos on their first class travel.
@ Jared — The self-proclaimed DL expert, who didn’t really know his subject matter, has (mostly) retired frmo blogging.
@Gene — There is @Tim Dunn, though not a blogger, whose superlative knowledge of DL is not unlike my own of Hilton Honors. You want to know about DL? Listen to Tim. I have checked many of his claims and they usually hold. Just run the other way when it comes to politics because he is a MAGAT.
Surprised FM is at the bottom of the list, while I heard and have gone to all the other sites on this list. Can’t remember the last time I intentionally went to pointsguy though or thinking “let me check out pointsguy”
Personally, I have the following sites bookmarked on my browsers…FM, VFTW, OMAAT and DoC
Nevertheless, congrats to everyone on this list and thank you all for all that you do for us!
What’s AirBnB ,)
Whatever happened to Daraius Dubash and the Million Mile Secrets?!!! They were dominant 10 or so years ago (when he reveled the Vanilla Reloads/Blue Bird combo), or, it seemed that they were!
Also, Ric Garrido and his Loyalty Traveler blog used to offer solid analysis of loyalty programs and the miles/points collecting hobby
Oh, wow, does this mean there will be more Twitter wars? That whole attack is still bugging me. It felt like a gang up, just proving that they are a big site with high paid writers and while you are obviously not poor and, gosh do I want to come at you sometimes (credit cards and SWA! STOP! HA!) at least you write your own site on your own and don’t remove comments, etc. Posting my real email here as usual, but not my usual UN, because I don’t want to be attacked by TPG even on my 25 reader site. That whole attack from the guy who uses “big” at the most used descriptor and non standard contractions made “standard” by iPhone dictation (“would’ve,” “could’ve,” “should’ve”–which I see all over their site, and which is something I never let my college English students write in any formal writing; they are not the same as “can’t,” “won’t” and “don’t,” for example) criticizing your journalism was ironic.
This site, without the tabloid headlines and the controversy in the comment section, would probably rank a lot lower.
When was the last time you got anything useful from this site? It’s not to say that Gary isn’t knowledgeable but most folks enjoy coming here so that they rag on each other with little to no moderation. Folks get to show up here and pound their chest as they claim to be an expert on all things aviation.
As for TPG, they’re doing surprisingly well being as though their comment section was killed some time ago.
I would place a small wager that if this site were do to kill the comment section (or moderate it like other sites do) it probably wouldn’t make the top 100 sites as the content is mostly of the tabloid variety.
As I type this I’m wondering why I even come back to this site…
@Jared Houser – ‘Eye Of The Flyer’ (Chris Carley and Rene de Lambert) is the travel blog that covers DL.
@2808 Heavy – roughly speaking comments sections do not help traffic. Maybe comments bump up traffic 1/10th of 1%. Meanwhile they push away people from reading too. And they can be not great for search traffic as well.
I keep the comments section here relatively open so that people can share things they know and so people can feel free to disagree with me.
These look like unique user numbers (not page views – we did 2.4m in March). This is is why TPG is high (lots of one off Google visits) and FT is low (small base).
In terms of page views I would guess it reverses – I must read 1,000 pages on FT per month but count as 1 user.
Greg also published FMs page views recently and he is well under half of mine – but our forum gives us a similar boost to FT.
PS. Thanks for doing the work, something I’ve never bothered doing myself!
The other interesting fact here is that longevity counts. (Upgraded is an exception but that is written purely for SEO and I guess has virtually no hard core readers.) No quick wins in this game – you win the readers one at a time.
TPG is so generic, as if it is: Points and Miles for dummies. As with the high school editions they try to give answers with no insight. Without comments, their take on things(not necessarily correct) stand.
Generally no longer read their advice section but skim the rest for any missed news.
@Kalboz – Daraius sold to Bankrate (same site that purchased The Points Guy) and that was acquired by RedVentures. Eventually Daraius left the site, so did Emily Jablon, and it because an SEO play for awhile before being dustbinned – I do not see new content since June 2021.
@ DCS — FWIW, I wasn’t referring to Tim Dunn. I was referring to the Mother Ship of bad blogs.
@Gene — I never said you were. The questions was “who covers DL?”. You mentioned some now senile blogger and I suggested Dunn.
I’m a huge milesfeed guy. It’s great to see the headlines of the blogs then visit as needed.
I’m surprised at how few visit it.
@Gene – Actually blogging more than ever – thanks for reading!
As hobbyists, do we care about page counts? As hobbyists, do we care that the police (accidentally) broke the arm of a deaf, elderly lady? As hobbyists, do we care about the fare-of-the-day from Bangalore to Santiago or the tomorrow-only 10 percent discount at the Hilton in Baku? Give me a (stinkin’) break. Four or five of the websites listed are absolutely useless. Absolutely. As hobbyists, there’s a simple question: does any of this affect our points earn and redemption strategy?
While Frequent Miler has a lower page count, its content is absolutely focused on the hobbyist and offers far more value to me. The same can be said about other websites that aren’t even on the list. I’ll again say that the greatest value I experience is on private-access sites.
Way to go, Gary. I didn’t know you’d rank that high, but I read you every day. I bet back in 2018 OMAAT would have been much higher. I like Ben a lot, and trust everything he says over everyone else, but his passion isn’t there anymore, and that’s fair, since he has more important things in his life now.
Live and Let’s Fly is absolute must read. I’m surprised Matthew was that low, though I think his blog functions more like a community than any other blog. Matthew is also the current king of reviews. He walks in a world where many just talk.
The FM guys are great, and innovate in a way nobody else does (4C4C, 30K to Faraway). I love their fun challenges.
It’s sad to me that TPG is so high. They’re just so often factually wrong and without comments there’s no accountability.
Way to go Gary – that’s great and a testament to the quality of your work. I check VFTW at least once a day and am consistently impressed with your articles. Thanks for all that you do.
@Jerry – six months ago OMAAT was unquestionably seeing more traffic than me, and I do not know with factual/specificity what his actual traffic is, this is just similarweb data for what it’s worth. Thank you for reading!
My top four are…
1.) FrequentMiler
2.) One Mile At A Time
3.) View From The Wing
4.) God Save The Points
The Points Guy is the worst… Flyertalk and upgradedpoints are probably the best for specific information.
TPG periodically regurgitates the same old review of the Amex Centurion Card. There are errors in the benefits they list. Changes that occurred years ago. One of many such articles.
@Gary Leff – Since he was mentioned, you should probably send a good bottle of wine to Tim Dunn since, according to him, he drives a lot of traffic to your site 😉
Like Avis Car Rental, View from the Wing is number two, so you try harder.
https://www.denverpost.com/2013/08/13/we-try-harder-the-story-of-most-brilliant-ad-slogan-of-the-20th-century/#:~:text=NEW%20YORK%20%E2%80%94%20In%201962%2C%20Avis,tout%20the%20brand's%20customer%20service.
Really appreciate the complements for Frequent Miler! Thanks Gary for listing us as a must-read, and thanks for each commenter who mentioned us!
I agree with Raffles that these appear to be Unique page views. For Frequent Miler, Google Analytics tells me that in March we had 1,011,878 pageviews and 890,651 unique page views. The second number is much closer to the number listed in the article (853,000)
I hope TPG wont gulp and kill DoC like the way it killed TIF (TravelisFree) and MP (mommypoints)
Raffles, we are FT addicts. The majority of people interested somewhat in miles and points don’t have the time and inclination to be like the more frequent users of FT. The more frequent user I’d FT are but a minority of the members of FT. It’s rather telling when the BA forum on FT has become the most active (or one of the most active forums) on FT despite US frequent flyer programs being much bigger than BA’s program. Speaks to a relative stagnation of sort in terms of FT’s growth — a stagnation that may be attributable to: the skew of FT having an older demographic than the internet as a whole in the US; moderation/administrative practices on the site; the growth in alternative online sources for this information that make for an easier read for a larger segment of the public; and alternative spaces to discuss the topics with more frankness.
If VFTW killed the comments section, I suspect it would turn out to be bad for VFTW’s business. It would likely also make VFTW boring for Señor Leff, and/or signify that he’s winding down his participation in the space.
I am actually impressed by how many Centurion-holding acquaintances of mine seem to be familiar with VFTW. It was something I definitely did not expect this, and it was way less familiar 5 or 10 years ago than now. TPG was more expectable. FT barely registers for this audience relative to TPG and VFTW.
I almost never visit TPG. But when it comes to the miles/point rich people with an interest in the space but no real interest in going out of their way for the info, lots seem to end up with TPG info popping up from searches and thinking it’s golden enough.
It’s going to be fascinating to see what kind of AI manipulation games will be attempted by some of these big audience sites in the space.
Frequent Miler and LoyaltyLobby are under-appreciated goldmines — and sometimes I think I visit them as many days a week as I do FT.
TPG is overrated and typically old news or no news to me. TPG has a big mass market with its more easily digested content for the less-discerning, less-hooked masses, and that is its strength (for others but not for me).
@ Rene — No thanks needed. I dont read your former blog. I try to focus my time on the few most useful blogs by going to them directly, bypassing BoardingArea altogether.
I don’t know if this is accurate as ChatGPT told me MilesTalk was rated #5 in a TPG poll 😉
Fascinating info. Exactly what category on SimilarWeb did you search?