Most Popular Catholic Blogs
One of the things that most Catholic bloggers and blog-visitors would love to know is: “What are the most popular Catholic blogs?” Unfortunately, there has been no good way to find out, as such statistics have either not been publicly available or difficult to compile.
Until now.
As a service to the Catholic blog community, I decided to put on my programming hat and attack this problem. I knew two things: the list of Catholic blogs is publicly available at the Catholic Blog Directory and the number of Google Reader subscribers for every blog is also publicly available. The problem: who is going to manually determine the subscriber numbers for over 2,000 blogs? Thus, I wrote a program that would do the work for me (programmers are essentially lazy people), gathering the subscriber numbers for every Catholic blog at the Directory. I then ranked them in order by number of subscribers. Below is the top 25 plus a link to the top 200.
Big red disclaimer: this list is based on Google Reader subscribers only. I imagine that this is a good indicator of a blog’s popularity compared to other blogs, but it does not measure actual traffic to the site or the total number of subscribers across different feed readers. Furthermore, it doesn’t guage a blog’s current popularity as much as its popularity over the full history of the blog.
Top 25 Most Popular Catholic Blogs by Google Reader Subscribers
(1) What Does the Prayer Really Say?: 4841
(2) Whispers in the Loggia: 4685
(3) Charlotte Was Both: 3053
(4) Conversion Diary: 1817
(5) New Advent Blog: 1429
(6) Creative Minority Report: 1248
(7) Patrick Madrid: 1173
(8) Standing on my Head: 1156
(9) The Hermeneutic of Continuity: 1053
(10) Damian Thompson: 954
(11) Rorate Caeli: 933
(12) The New Liturgical Movement: 892
(13) Ask Sister Mary Martha: 867
(14) Mere Comments: 811
(15) Catholic and Enjoying It!: 796
(16) Ignatius Insight Scoop: 749
(17) By Sun and Candlelight: 712
(18) Catholic Cuisine: 648
(19) The Shrine of the Holy Whapping: 643
(20) Testosterhome: 638
(21) Happy Catholic: 607
(22) The Crescat: 573
(23) Domine, da mihi hanc aquam!: 521
(24) Shower of Roses: 481
(25) Wildflowers and Marbles: 474
See the list of the Top 200 Most Popular Catholic Blogs over at my main website.
For those who are curious, my blog came in #303, which isn’t bad out of over 2,000 blogs considering I’ve only been doing this for a little over a year. But feel free to subscribe to my blog to bump me up. 
Jesus subscribes to my blog.
-Tim-
Thanks, Eric. This is a huge service to blog-readers!
Wow! Thank you so much for doing this! So cool!
Thanks for putting this together, Eric. I’m surprised I came in at #50. I’m adding you to my Catablogue
Very interesting.
Got any data on the “rest” of us (i.e., NOT the most popular 200)?
Or would you be willing to post the code, so I can run it myself?
Nod,
I have the entire list, but I didn’t publish it because I thought some lower-ranking bloggers might not want their blog listed. And the problem with posting the code is that I wrote it to run on my linux server using a MySQL database, so it’s not exactly user-friendly or portable.
But if any blogger emails me, I’ll be happy to tell them their rank.
Thanks LarryD!
Woohoo!!!!!!!!!155! I need a few more to bump me up into LarryD’s level.
Hey Eric:
I exist! I do! Please let me have some tiny Sally Field moment!
lol
Thanks! This is very cool and helpful!
I was very surprise to see my own blog on the list as number 145. Although the “name of the blog” is wrong. That name was my “old blog name” I have since changed it to “Catholic Christian Homeschooling”. I’ve had a bi-line that reads formally known as “My Adventures into Christian Homeschooling”. I’ve been thinking about getting rid of that by-line, but after this post today I realized that may not be a good idea.
I have some advice for Catholic bloggers. I don’t care how good or popular you think your site is no one wants to jump through a lot of hoops to leave a comment. I refuse to ” register ” or ” log on ” in order to leave a comment. Your loss.
There are lots of great Catholic blogs out there, and many that don’t show up on the above list. Thanks to all the writers out there who are promoting, proclaiming, and making more readily available the tenets of our Catholic faith!
wow, this post is a hit. I just subscibed to google reader so I could subscribe to your blog. I really don’t have time to go to more than one a day but thanks for the list. If I get bored with TDL I’ll know were to go.
Why Dr. Francis Beckwith’s blog not in the list? His insights from being a former Evangelical Theological President moving to Catholicism is superbly tasteful for the intellect.
Anyways, i still love your list. Peace
Jae,
I love Dr. Beckwith’s blog as well. But this is not a list of my personal favorites, just an ordering by Google Reader subscribers. However, if you look carefully, you will see that Dr. Beckwith’s blog “Return to Rome” is ranked #124.
Thanks so much for doing this, I’m tickled pink that I’m on ANY list worth mentioning
Wow. How do I get my blog more notices so I can make my way on the list?
leavinglc.blogspot.com
I’m not quite sure why AmP has such poor Google Reader subscriber numbers. Considering AmP Facebook has 3,000+ twitter followers and is approaching 5,000 Facebook fans – it’s a pretty big community.
Thomas,
I also noticed that American Papist was not near the top, and that surprised me as well, so I did a little digging. It appears that you are a victim of your recent move to Catholic Vote Action. When I ran the program, it grabbed your Google Reader subscribers at your Catholic Vote Action feed, which is 271. But if you look at the Google Reader subscriber numbers from your old AmericanPapist.com feed (which is now inactive), it is 1,966, which easily puts you at #4 on the list.
Unfortunately, programs can be “dumb” – they only do what they are told to do and don’t make exceptions!
More proof I am not humble.
Where is my blog on the list? Considering 4000 subscribers via Feedreader and 699 via Google Reader.
Or how about And Sometimes Tea with 255 subscribers in google reader.
[...] 200 most popular Catholic blogs by Google subscribers,” CatholicAnarchy.org rates 92. He notes some of the issues involved with his method of ranking, but regardless, it seems that there is a [...]
Pingback by Thanks and hello | catholicanarchy.org™ — June 5, 2010 @ 2:17 amJeff,
I’m going to have to blame Google on your omission. The way my program works is that it does a search on the blog name at Google Reader, which then returns the number of subscribers. Sure enough, if you search on “The Curt Jester” under “Add Subscription” at Google Reader, you see that it says “14 subscribers” and lists http://www.splendoroftruth.com/curtjester/feed/ as the feed.
However, I am personally subscribed to your blog in Google Reader (using http://www.splendoroftruth.com/curtjester/atom.xml) and when I show details for your blog, it says “699 subscribers,” which puts you #18 on the list. But that feed doesn’t show up in the search results for you. I did a lot of spot-checking after I ran this program, and everyone I checked returned the correct results. I’m not sure why Google doesn’t list your main feed in the search results.
I plan on updating the list sometime in the future, and I’ll be sure to manually include your correct feed. My apologies for your wonderful blog being left out.
While I know that the Curt Jester, And Sometimes Tea and other Google-challenged blogs are more well read than my little blog, it was such a delight to be #141 on your list Mr. Sammons. Thank you for your work on this.
Once again the blogworld allows me to “meet” more inspiring Catholics to uplift me and I look forward to putting you in my Google Reader so that can enjoy your previously-unknown-to-me blog and writing.
Jeff,
I just saw your comment about And Sometimes Tea. It is listed in the Top 200, ranking a solid #84.
It seems that Google only has it in for you.
There’s always http://www.patrickcoffin.net, by the host of Catholic Answers Live radio show.
– Sally Fields wannabe
And a fine blog you have, Patrick; at least know that I subscribe to it. In other words:
Someone likes you! Someone really likes you!
Now when are you going to have me on your show…
I have noticed a couple of Catholic blogs that aren’t on this list that have more Google reader subscribers than my blog does. One, for example, would be Elizabeth Foss’s blog, In the Heart of My Home.
Aloha Eric:
Thank you for doing this. I look forward to checking out all the blogs I was not familiar with. BTW, I am pleasantly surprised and humbled to see my blog make it in the top 200.
God bless,
I’m glad you had this explanation here of where you compiled this information. I actually have 350 google reader subscribers, but I’ve never been listed on the Catholic blog directory. Thanks for providing this list- it’s really neat!
Darn, I don’t see one of my favorites in the top 200. Chiesa News is not updated as often, but the quality of the material makes up for it!
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/?eng=y
Great list! I’m sure I came in dead last since I never enabled the subscription feature on my blog until I read this. So thank you for not putting the lowest ones up (lol)!
I take the blame for elizabethfoss.com not breaking the top 10. As “webmaster” I changed the domain name a month ago from ebeth.typepad.com (which has 916 subscribers) to elizabethfoss.com com (which has 66). The two should be combined for 982 total but Eric couldn’t have known.
Though it is interesting that the typepad site didn’t even make the top 25…shenanigans?
Mike,
The omission was due to how Google Reader returns results. In my program I just grab the first result, which is why Elizabeth’s blog returned the lower number. The same thing happened to American Papist.
Actually, google reader subscribers can be tricky in many ways. You’ll have 1 number of subscribers to your actual blog address, but another number of people subscribed straight to your feed address. I’m assuming this list doesn’t account for that either.
[...] 16, 2010 Posted by tantamergo in Admin, Basics, General Catholic. trackback Recently, someone compiled a list of the top Catholic blogs. No, my sweet, demure little blog did not make the list, but that’s ok. My plans for [...]
Pingback by Why do more traditional Catholic blogs prosper far more than liberal blogs? « A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics — June 16, 2010 @ 4:00 pmIdolatry is banned by God, that is biblically sound. Why does the Catholic church practice idolatry?
David,
It doesn’t.
Hello, when can I write for you? May the LORD God bless you in the name of St. Judas Maccabaeus.
[...] Most Popular Catholic Blogs – What happens when you find the first relatively objective way to rank the popularity of Catholic blogs? You get just about every Catholic coming to your blog! This post, in which I ranked Catholic blogs by their Google Reader subscribers, was easily the most popular post I had this year, more than tripling the traffic of the 2nd-ranked post. [...]
Pingback by Top 10 Most Popular Posts of 2010 « Divine Life – A Blog by Eric Sammons — December 29, 2010 @ 7:57 amEric, You’ve posted a great list of Catholic Blogs! However, I especially like your Pictures of Holiness… My personal favorites are St Therese and St Pio. How about adding Archbishop Fulton Sheen?! I think he would fit right in! Blessings & Keep up the good work, Renee – Saints Market Catholic Store
[...] June I created a program to rank the most popular Catholic blogs by Google subscribers. I made a number of disclaimers about my ranking system, but all in all it was a pretty accurate [...]
Pingback by Updated: Most Popular Catholic Blogs « Divine Life – A Blog by Eric Sammons — January 27, 2011 @ 11:39 amIt is true that present time ‘Facebook’ is used by a dig number of people but this blog is a easy source of knowing about Holiness.I especially like your Pictures of Holiness.Thank you for your this job.
A large number of things are added in the catholic blogs. it is a good site.a lots of learning process around this site.