TaxProf Blog

Law Prof Blog Rankings

Below are the updated quarterly traffic rankings (visitors and page views) of the Top 35 blogs edited by law professors with publicly available SiteMeters for the most recent 12-month period (April 1, 2008 - March 31, 2009) [click on chart to enlarge]:

• These Law Prof Blog Rankings are drawn from Dan Solove's comprehensive Law Professor Blogger Census.  They include all blogs edited by law professors -- both law-related and non law-related.
• Please email me the names of any Law Prof Blogs with traffic over the past twelve months that would qualify for inclusion on the lists (144,236 visitors and/or 199,584 page views).  If necessary, I will re-publish the list to include all qualifying blogs.
• Several popular Law Prof Blogs do not have publicly available SIteMeters and thus are not included on the list:  e.g., BlackProf, California Appellate Report, Credit Slips, The Deal Professor, Dorf on Law, Feminist Law Professors, Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Blog, Legal Theory, Point of Law, ProfessorBainbridge.com. 
• These rankings cover only those blogs edited by law professors.  Other law-related blogs edited by practitioners, librarians, non-law school academics, and journalists are not included on this list:  e.g., Above the Law, How Appealing, Law Librarian Blog, Wall Street Journal Law Blog.
• Members of our Law Professor Blogs Network comprise, by visitors, one of the Top 10, six of the Top 20, and ten of the Top 35 blogs; and by page views, one of the Top 10, five of the Top 20, and ten of the Top 35 blogs.
• These rankings reflect 7.0% growth in visitors (159,028,769 v. 148,557,893) and 6.1% growth in page views (187,177,399 v. 176,493,186) from the last quarterly rankings (January 1, 2008 - December 31, 2008).

The Top 10 Tax Blogs

The folks at Blogs.com asked me for my list of the Top 10 Tax Blogs:

ataxingmatter
Don't Mess With Taxes
Mauled Again
Nonprofit Law Prof Blog
Roth & Co.
Start Making Sense
The Tax Girl
Tax Policy Blog
TaxProf Blog
TaxVox Blog

For links to 68 tax blogs, see the left column permanent resources on TaxProf Blog.

2008 Law Prof Blog Traffic Rankings

Below are the updated quarterly traffic rankings (visitors and page views) of the Top 35 blogs edited by law professors with publicly available SiteMeters for the most recent 12-month period (January 1, 2008 - December 31, 2008) [click on chart to enlarge]:

• These Law Prof Blog Rankings are drawn from Dan Solove's comprehensive Law Professor Blogger Census.  They include all blogs edited by law professors -- both law-related and non law-related. 
• Please email me the names of any Law Prof Blogs with traffic over the past twelve months that would qualify for inclusion on the lists (146,795 visitors and/or 197,853 page views).  If necessary, I will re-publish the list to include all qualifying blogs.
• Several popular Law Prof Blogs do not have publicly available SIteMeters and thus are not included on the list:  e.g., BlackProf, California Appellate Report, Credit Slips, The Deal Professor, Dorf on Law, Feminist Law Professors, Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Blog, Legal Theory, Point of Law. 
• These rankings cover only those blogs edited by law professors.  Other law-related blogs edited by practitioners, librarians, non-law school academics, and journalists are not included on this list:  e.g., Above the Law, How Appealing, Law Librarian Blog, Wall Street Journal Law Blog.
• Members of our Law Professor Blogs Network comprise, by visitors, one of the Top 10, five of the Top 20, and nine of the Top 35 blogs; and by page views, one of the Top 10, five of the Top 20, and ten of the Top 35 blogs.
• These rankings reflect 11.0% growth in visitors (148,557,893 v. 133,809,690) and 7.7% growth in page views (176,493,186 v. 163,841,443) from the last quarterly rankings (October 1, 2007 - September 30, 2008).

Law Prof Blog Rankings

Below are the updated quarterly traffic rankings (visitors and page views) of the Top 35 blogs edited by law professors with publicly available SiteMeters for the most recent 12-month period (October 1, 2007 - September 30, 2008) [click on chart to enlarge]:

  

• These Law Prof Blog Rankings are drawn from Dan Solove's comprehensive Law Professor Blogger Census.  They include all blogs edited by law professors -- both law-related and non law-related. 
Please email me the names of any Law Prof Blogs with traffic over the past twelve months that would qualify for inclusion on the lists (125,947 visitors and/or 180,245 page views).  If necessary, I will re-publish the list to include all qualifying blogs.
• Several popular Law Prof Blogs do not have publicly available SIteMeters and thus are not included on the list:  e.g., BlackProf, California Appellate Report, Credit Slips, The Deal Professor, Dorf on Law, Feminist Law Professors, Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Blog, Legal Theory, Point of Law.
• The list includes only those Law Prof Blogs that have been in operation for at least a year (and thus does not include popular blogs such as The Faculty Lounge).
• These rankings cover only those blogs edited by law professors.  Other law-related blogs edited by practitioners, librarians, non-law school academics, and journalists are not included on this list:  e.g., Above the Law, How Appealing, Law Librarian Blog, Wall Street Journal Law Blog.
• Members of our Law Professor Blogs Network comprise, by visitors, two of the Top 10, five of the Top 20, and eleven of the Top 35 blogs; and by page views, one of the Top 10, five of the Top 20, and ten the Top 35 blogs.
• These rankings reflect 8.8% growth in visitors (133,809.690 v. 123,040,260) and 9.7% growth in page views (163,841,443 v. 149,406,023) from the last quarterly rankings (July 1, 2007 - June 30, 2008).

TaxProf Blog Crosses 5,000,000-Visitor Mark

After less than 4 1/2 years in operation, TaxProf Blog has crossed the 5,000,000-visitor mark. (We crossed the 4,000,000-visitor mark less than six months ago.) To put that number in perspective, it is the most visitors to any law-focused blog edited by a single law professor, according to publicly-available traffic statistics. (It is also 4,993,422 more than the number of number of downloads of all of my articles!)  For more on law professor blog traffic data, see here and here.

I have made over 11,700 posts to the blog, readers have posted 9,000 comments, and other bloggers have linked to the blog over 2,800 times.

The 5,000,000th visitor came to TaxProf Blog from Los Angeles, California at 11:33 p.m. EST yesterday.

I am grateful to the growing number of regular readers and hope you are finding the blog helpful in your tax research, teaching, practice, and policymaking roles.

Law Prof Blog Rankings

Below are the updated quarterly traffic rankings (visitors and page views) of the Top 35 blogs edited by law professors with publicly available SiteMeters for the most recent 12-month period (July 2007 - June 2008):

• These Law Prof Blog Rankings are drawn from Dan Solove's comprehensive Law Professor Blogger Census. They include all blogs edited by law professors -- both law-related and non law-related.
• Please email me the names of any Law Prof Blogs with traffic over the past twelve months that would qualify for inclusion on the lists (113,359 visitors and/or 161,532 page views).  If necessary, I will re-publish the list to include all qualifying blogs.
• Several popular Law Prof Blogs do not have publicly available SIteMeters and thus are not included on the list:  e.g., BlackProf, California Appellate Reports, Credit Slips, The Deal Professor, Dorf on Law, Feminist Law Professors, Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Blog, Legal Theory, Point of Law.
• The list includes only those Law Prof Blogs that have been in operation for at least a year (and thus does not include popular blogs such as The Faculty Lounge, Leiter's Legal Philosophy Blog, and Race to the Bottom).
• These rankings cover only those blogs edited by law professors.  Other law-related blogs edited by practitioners, librarians, non-law school academics, and journalists are not included on this list:  e.g., Above the Law, How Appealing, Law Librarian Blog, Wall Street Journal Law Blog.
• Members of our Law Professor Blogs Network comprise, by visitors, two of the Top 10, five of the Top 20, and eleven of the Top 35 blogs; and by page views, one of the Top 10, five of the Top 20, and eleven of the Top 35 blogs.
• These rankings reflect 4.8% growth in visitors (123,040,260 v.117,348,819) and 4.5% growth in page views (149,406,023 v. 142,926,499) from the last quarterly rankings (April 2007 - March 2008).

Law Prof Blog Rankings

Below are the updated quarterly traffic rankings (visitors and page views) of the leading blogs edited by law professors with publicly available SiteMeters for the most recent 12-month period (April 2007 - March 2008):

• These Law Prof Blog Rankings are drawn from Dan Solove's comprehensive Law Professor Blogger Census. They include all blogs edited by law professors -- both law-related and non law-related.
• Please email me the names of any Law Prof Blogs with traffic over the past twelve months that would qualify for inclusion on the lists (82,141 visitors and/or 125,333 page views).  If necessary, I will re-publish the list to include all qualifying blogs.
• Several popular Law Prof Blogs do not have publicly available SIteMeters and thus are not included on the list:  e.g., BlackProf, California Appellate Reports, Credit Slips, The Deal Professor, Dorf on Law, Feminist Law Professors, Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Blog, Legal Theory, Point of Law, The Right Coast.
• The list includes only those Law Prof Blogs that have been in operation for at least a year (and thus does not include popular blogs such as The Faculty Lounge, Leiter's Legal Philosophy Blog, M&A Law Prof Blog, and Race to the Bottom).
• These rankings cover only those blogs edited by law professors.  Other law-related blogs edited by practitioners, librarians, non-law school academics, and journalists are not included on this list:  e.g., Above the Law, How Appealing, Law Librarian Blog, Wall Street Journal Law Blog.
• Members of our Law Professor Blogs Network comprise, by visitors, two of the Top 10, five of the Top 20, and eleven of the Top 35 blogs; and by page views, one of the Top 10, five of the Top 20, and eleven of the Top 35 blogs.

TaxProf Blog: 8th Most Influential Law Faculty Blog

Race to the Bottom has ranked the 50 Most Influential Law Faculty Blogs for 2007:

[T]here is no single metric for ranking the popularity and/or influence of blogs, much less law blogs. There are two principle ways of ranking blogs: traffic (which is not a term with automatic meaning) and through the number of links to a page. Links has generally been used as sign of influence. Two ranking systems, Google (Page Rank) and Technorati (www.technorati.com) rely mostly on links. Justia relies on traffic although it assesses traffic largely from the results of its own search engine. In addition, a number of blogs have a site meter or were willing to provide internal traffic data. Finally, with respect to law faculty blogs, influence can be seen from the number of court and law review citations. This system, therefore, ranks law faculty blogs based upon traffic, links, and citations. For each category, blogs were assigned a score, generally 1-10, with the lowest signifying the best performance.

I am delighted that TaxProf Blog is tied for eighth under this measure.  Here are the Top 10:

1. Volokh Conspiracy

2. Sentencing Law and Policy

3. Jurist- Paper Chase

4. Instapundit.com

5. Balkanization

6. Concurring Opinions

7. Hugh Hewitt's Townhall Blog

8. Prawfs Blawg

8. TaxProf Blog

8. ProfessorBainbridge.com

I am thrilled that thirteen of the Top 50 blogs are members of our Law Professor Blogs Network:

2.  Sentencing Law and Policy

8.  TaxProf Blog

13. White Collar Crime Prof Blog

17. Workplace Prof Blog

21. Immigration Prof Blog

26. Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

26. Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog

31. CrimProf Blog

35. M & A Law Prof Blog

40. TortsProf Blog

40. Legal Profession Blog

43. Family Law Prof Blog

47. PropertyProf Blog

Law Prof Blog Ranking by Citation by Courts

Following up on recent posts on Law Prof Blog Rankings (here, here and here):  J. Robert Brown, Jr. (Denver) has ranked the Top 10 Law Prof Blogs by citation by courts.  Our sister Sentencing Law and Policy blog has an amazing 28 of the 37 total court citations of Law Prof Blogs.

Law Prof Blog Ranking by Citation in Law Reviews

Following up on recent posts on Law Prof Blog Rankings (here and here):  J. Robert Brown, Jr. (Denver) has ranked the Top 20 Law Prof Blogs by citation in law reviews.  TaxProf Blog is #14 with 25 citations in law reviews (tied with InstaPundit).

More on Law Prof Blog Rankings

Following up on Tuesday's post on Law Prof Blog Rankings, which lists the Top 30 Law Prof Blogs by traffic over the past twelve months (by both visitors and page views):  J. Robert Brown, Jr. (Denver) has posted Of Empires, Independents, and Captives: Law Blogging, Law Scholarship, and Law School Rankings on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

Law faculty blogs have been around for much of the new millennium. This article examines these blogs, including their role in the legal scholarship continuum and their growing influence of legal community.

The paper begins with an evolutionary study, noting that law blogging originally began in a state of nature, with few rules governing frequency or content of posts. Increased competition and the emergence of Empire and Captive law blogs, however, has resulted in a growing sense of order on the legal blogosphere.

Perhaps as a result, the influence of law blogs has increased. The paper relies on a list of approximately 130 law faculty blogs and studies the frequency of law review and case citations. The numbers have been undergoing significant growth. The growth is particularly noteworthy given the difficulty in searching for material posted on the Internet.

The paper also studies the impact of law blogging on rankings in the US News. In the short term, blogging can disproportionately benefit law schools and faculty outside the top tier. Blogs can enhance the reputation of the sponsoring faculty member, enable them to route around the biases inherent in the system of law review placements and SSRN downloads, permit a level of participation in the legal debate that might otherwise not be available, and facilitate the dissemination of information important to alumni and other constituencies. Most critically, however, they represent a cost effective mechanism for improving a law school's reputational rankings and, perforce, its overall rankings in the infamous US News and World Report.

Much of the data used in the paper is derived from a list of 130 law faculty blogs, something paired down to the top 50 law faculty blogs. The top 50 was determined based upon a number of ranking metrics. These lists are included as an Appendix to this article.

Jay has begun a series of posts on his Race to the Bottom blog on Law Faculty Blogs and Rankings and promises to release "a list of the top 50 law faculty blogs next week using a variety of metrics that, in addition to traffic, attempt to assess influence. Thus, the ranking takes into account the number of law review and court citations."  I have been following Jay's work with great interest and will share his results here.

Law Prof Blog Rankings

In Are Scholars Better Bloggers?, 84 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1025 (2006), my introduction to our symposium on Bloggership: How Blogs Are Transforming Legal Scholarship, I measured the performance of our participants and their blogs under these metrics:

• Citation Counts (p. 1029)
• SSRN Download Counts (p. 1030)
• Blog Traffic -- Visitors and Page Views (pp. 1031-32)

The following charts list the traffic statistics of the leading blogs edited by law professors.  After looking at various methods of ranking blogs -- those that focus on traffic (e.g., Compete), often generated through a particular search engine (e.g., Alexa, Justia), and those that focus on links (e.g., Google Page Rank, Technorati, Truth Laid Bare) -- I decided to use the actual traffic statistics of those Law Prof Blogs with publicly available SiteMeters.  Here are the Top 35 Law Prof Blogs by both visitors and page views for the most recent 12-month period (Feburary 2007 - January 2008):

Law Prof Blog Traffic Ranking -- Visitors (Feb. 2007 - Jan. 2008)

1.   InstaPundit	70,748,231
2.   Hugh Hewitt	13,392,343
3.   Volokh Conspiracy	8,647,368
4.   Althouse	4,429,672
5.   Leiter Reports: Philosophy	1,629,699
6.   Patently-O	1,532,860
7.   TaxProf Blog	1,358,016
8.   Balkinization	1,294,363
9.   Concurring Opinions	1,125,512
10. Sentencing Law & Policy	907,141
11. Professor Bainbridge.com	856,240
12. Jack Bog's Blog	776,272
13. Leiter's Law School Reports	726,005
14. PrawfsBlawg	639,468
15. Discourse.net	451,091
16. White Collar Crime Prof Blog	383,443
17. Conglomerate	378,787
18. Opinio Juris	323,519
19. Workplace Prof Blog	298,525
20. Is That Legal?	242,119
21. Chicago Faculty Blog	235,028
22. CrimProf Blog	211,119
23. Wills, Trusts & Est. Prof Blog	202,324
24. Ideoblog	186,511
25. ImmigrationProf Blog	181,055
26. ContractsProf Blog	167,861
27. Empirical Legal Studies	148,157
28. Election Law Blog	127,488
29. Religion Clause	122,352
30. Legal History Blog	109,834
31. Family Law Prof Blog	108,608
32. MoneyLaw	100,298
33. Sex Crimes	89,459
34. Legal Profession Blog	88,811
35. Madisonian Theory	78,821

Law Prof Blog Traffic Ranking -- Page Views (Feb. 2007 - Jan. 2008)

1.   InstaPundit	75,868,173
2.   Hugh Hewitt	16,604,852
3.   Volokh Conspiracy	12,403,944
4.   Althouse	8,062,853
5.   Patently-O	3,015,706
6.   Leiter Reports: Philosophy	2,706,134
7.   Jack Bog's Blog	1,974,956
8.   Balkinization	1,961,379
9.   TaxProf Blog	1,946,062
10. Concurring Opinions	1,751,358
11. Sentencing Law & Policy	1,666,960
12. Professor Bainbridge.com	1,209,228
13. PrawfsBlawg	1,079,328
14. Leiter's Law School Reports	1,057,960
15. Discourse.net	615,598
16. Conglomerate	569,339
17. Opinio Juris	557,642
18. White Collar Crime Prof Blog	512,520
19. Workplace Prof Blog	448,000
20. Chicago Faculty Blog	382,379
21. Is That Legal?	355,722
22. Wills, Trusts & Est. Prof Blog	298,280
23. ImmigrationProf Blog	270,566
24. Ideoblog	268,983
25. CrimProf Blog	246,824
26. Empirical Legal Studies	222,198
27. Election Law Blog	205,442
28. Religion Clause	188,766
29. Sex Crimes	163,491
30. ContractsProf Blog	160,461
31. Legal History Blog	158,708
32. Family Law Prof Blog	150,433
33. MoneyLaw	144,258
34. Legal Profession Blog	141,376
35. Truth on the Market	119,888

Some comments:

• These Law Prof Blog Rankings are drawn from Dan Solove's comprehensive Law Professor Blogger Census. They include all blogs edited by law professors -- both law-related and non law-related.
• Although I have tried to cull these Top 35 lists from the blogs that plausibly could generate enough traffic for inclusion, I may have inadvertently omitted qualifying blogs.  Please email me the names of any Law Prof Blogs with traffic over the past twelve months that would qualify for inclusion on the lists (78,821 visitors and/or 119,888 page views).  I will re-publish the lists to include all qualifying blogs.
• Several popular Law Prof Blogs do not have publicly available SIteMeters and thus are not included on the lists:  e.g., BlackProf, California Appellate Reports, Credit Slips, The Deal Professor, Dorf on Law, Feminist Law Professors, Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Blog, Legal History, Legal Theory, Mirror of Justice, Point of Law, The Right Coast.
• The lists include only those Law Prof Blogs that have been in operation for at least a year (and thus do not include popular blogs such as The Faculty Lounge, Leiter's Legal Philosophy Blog, M&A Law Prof Blog, and Race to the Bottom.
• Several popular law blogs are not included on these lists because they are not edited by law professors:  e.g., Above the Law, How Appealing, Law Librarian Blog, Wall Street Journal Law Blog.
• Two of the Top 10, five of the Top 20, and eleven of the Top 35 blogs are members of our Law Professor Blogs Network.

Update #1:  For blogosphere commentary on these rankings, see:

• Above the Law
• Althouse
• Balkinization
• Business Associations Blog
• Concurring Opinions I
• Concurring Opinions II
• Hugh Hewitt
• ImmigrationProf Blog
• InstaPundit
• Leiter's Law School Reports
• Mirror of Justice
• Race to the Bottom

Update #2:  Since my original post, Legal History Blog has opened its SiteMeter to the public, and Mirror of Justice and Race to the Bottom have added a SiteMeter. Legal History Blog now makes the Top 30 list in both visitors and page views; Mirror of Justice and Race to the Bottom report that they too would have made the Top 30 lists using data tracked by another service.  In addition, I inadvertently omitted Patenly-O (#6 visitors, #5 page views) and Sex Crimes (#33, #29) in my prior listing.