This list ranks over 1,400 of the world’s best travel blogs on the basis of algorithmic authority. It attempts to measure the authority of the website based on several popular SEO metrics.
As with all such lists, this is imperfect and only represents one way to look at the authority of a blog. Scroll down below the list to get a complete explanation of the metrics used, along with their strengths and weaknesses.
If you have a blog and would like it listed, please leave a comment with the URL of your travel blog.
If you don’t have a travel blog yet, read this guide for how to start a travel blog.
Rules For Inclusion on the List
- Your site must have travel as its main focus. If you primarily write about food, fashion, or something else, with a small travel section, it will not be listed.
- Your site must be hosted under its own domain. For example, Blogspot, Blogger, or Wordpress.com sites can’t be listed.
- Sites must be owned by the content creator(s). Corporate own sites are not included.
- The site must primarily be a travel blog. If the majority of your content is user-generated, or some other travel-related non-blogging content, it will not be listed. Travel companies that have a section of their website with a blog are not eligible.
- The domain must be older than 1 year. I’ve been flooded with requests from brand new blogs. The turnover rate for these websites is incredibly high. Many of them never post anything or are completely offline within a year. For this reason, I’m only listing sites that have been around for at least one year going forward.
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Overview of the Ranking Methodology
Figuring out the best travel blogs is an inherently flawed process. 20 people can look at it in 20 different ways. I do not claim that this list is the be-all and end-all when it comes to this subject.
This list attempts to be an objective look at website algorithmic authority. To do this, I take four publically available metrics which are all on a 100 point scale and take the average of the three to determine a site’s rank on the list. There is no subjectivity in the data or the results.
Why Authority? Other lists use traffic to rank sites. There is nothing wrong with that, but there are lots of ways to get traffic. Just publishing a lot of low-quality posts can build up overall traffic. Likewise, you could have an online forum that could inflate numbers, or you could just get a post that goes viral. Also, the only way to truly know traffic is to have voluntary participation with every single person on the list. Authority doesn’t tend to jump around a lot. Traffic can go up and down, but these metrics only have small fluctuations and take time to raise or lower.
What Are The Four Metrics? The four metrics that are used to rank the websites are:
- Trust Flow by Majestic
- Domain Authority by Moz
- Domain Rating by AHREFS
- Domain Score by SEMRush
Why These Four Metrics? To create a list like this, I needed metrics that were publically available and used a similar scale. I felt that these four metrics while having some overlap, were all different yet measured important aspects of website authority. Also, I am aware of the weaknesses of all the metrics, but they are weak in different ways, and I think they mostly cancel each other out when taken together.
Why Trust Flow? Trust Flow is a metric from Majestic.com. It is probably the least well known of the four metrics I use, but it is also the most enlightening. It is a measure of the quality of links to a website. You will notice that the majority of websites only have a Trust Flow number in the teens or twenties, even though they have a Domain Authority much higher. This is because they don’t have many links beyond the blogosphere. A high Trust Flow number represents links from mainstream media outlets and other large websites, which is exactly the sort of authority which this list is trying to capture. (Note: I am using DOMAIN Trust Flow, not URL Trust Flow. They are different numbers.)
This video explains how Trust Flow works:
Why Domain Authority? Moz’s Domain Authority has become a staple metric for the industry, so using it made sense. It is on a 100 point scale like the other metrics. Sites that have been around longer, with more links tend to score higher. While it is possible to game it, you can only game it so far as it is on a logarithmic scale. It captures both link quantity and quality.
This video explains how Domain Authority works:
Why Domain Rating? The third metric is Domain Rating from AHREFS. Like the other metrics, they use their proprietary database of links and websites to calculate an overall profile for each domain based on the quantity and quality of backlinks.
Why Authority Score? The fourth metric is Authority Score from SEMrush. Unlike the other metrics, it actually takes into consideration the number of keywords a site ranks for and how much actual traffic it gets.
Why isn’t my site listed? Ask. Just leave a comment below and if it meets the rules I will add it.
Why is my site data out of date? If you have a new site, data can change dramatically over a few months. If you would like a manual review of your site, please mention it in the comments.
What are the weaknesses of this list? Each of the individual metrics has weaknesses that are well known. This list also only captures the algorithmic authority of the website and no other real-world authority. If you appear on TV, have a popular YouTube channel, podcast or Instagram account, that will not be reflected on this list.
Does the list have a bias? Yes. It tends to be biassed towards sites that have been around a while. I have no problem with this bias as time and experience are important parts of what constitutes authority. The longer you’ve been around, the more likely to get high-quality links and build a social media following. I have recently added domain age to the list. This is taken from the date the domain was first registered. For non dot com domains for which this information isn’t available, I took the first day it appeared on the Internet Wayback Machine at archive.org. In the rare event, it is a brand new site which isn’t listed in the Internet Wayback Machine AND it isn’t a .com domain, I set 30-days before it was added to the list as the creation date.
What are the strengths of this list? It is hard to game all four of these metrics. The sites near the top of the list have been around for the better part of a decade. I don’t see how someone could jump into the top 10 after blogging for a year unless they were a celebrity when they started. The youngest sites near the top of the list have been around for at least 5-years.
Each one of these three metrics attempts to predict how a site will perform in search results. By using all three metrics, it serves as a double and triple check against any one metric. As all the metrics attempt to measure the same thing and are all using the same scale, I just take the average of the three, even though each metric has different median values.
How often will this list be updated? Periodically. A least once a quarter, but possibly more. All three of these companies have gotten better at updating their database and their metrics. That being said, you usually don’t see large swings in any of these numbers, so there is little need to constantly be updating.
What are the average values? The median values for the 4 metrics which are using in making up the list are below. Half of all sites will be above or below these values:
- Majestic Trust Flow: 11
- Moz Domain Authority: 34
- AHREFS Domain Rating: 22
- SemRush Authority Score: 29
If you have a value that is above or below these numbers, you are doing above or below average.