Top Ten CAD Blogs As Of May 2011

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend, and here in New York City it’s a point in the year that always seems to me to be a time of transition. I think I get this impression because, quite amazingly, this weekend like clockwork normally brings us our first taste of summer heat. Saturday the temperature reached 76°, Sunday it reached 83°, and today reached 89°.

The change in seasons in NYC can be quite abrupt. I was wearing long underwear a few weeks ago, and today I’m writing this article in shorts and a tank top. I do love the variety of seasons that we get to experience here!

A time of transition can be a good moment to pause and assess any number of different things. It’s kind of fitting then, to review the traffic data for the CAD blogs within the blogosphere, and then create a Top Ten CAD Blogs As Of May 2011 list, from that data.

I’ll parse through the myriad of CAD blogs and rank them according to traffic, by using www.alexa.com‘s Global Traffic Rank. Alexa explains that their traffic rank is a measure of a site’s popularity. The rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pagviews over the past 3 months. The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews is ranked #1.

In other words, Alexa’s #1 rank is the best-ranked site and # several million being NOT the best-ranked site. I know Alexa keeps records for at least 30,000,000 sites on the WWW.

As I already mentioned, there exists a ton of different CAD blogs, so I’ll narrow the scope of this post down to covering two categories of CAD blogs. Those will be, Autodesk CAD blogs and non-Autodesk CAD blogs that are general in nature and/or primarily cover standard AutoCAD.

In the future I’d like to do another post on non-Autodesk CAD blogs that cover specific software. For example, inventor blogs, civil 3D blogs, and etc. Therefore, if you have ideas for software or niche specific CAD blogs, then please let me know about them.

The websites that qualified for my data summary herein:

  1. Had an Alexa listing.
  2. Were websites that were structured primarily as a blog.

Lastly, if I’ve missed your website, then my apologies! I plan on compiling this list again on or about the one year anniversary of this post, so please let me know about your site and I’ll include it the next time around.

Top Ten CAD Blogs As Of May 2011 | General CAD Blogs

Of the forty four (44) general CAD blogs that I surveyed, thirty nine (39) had an Alexa rank. In tabular form, the Alexa Global Traffic Ranks are as follows:

General CAD Blogs Alexa Global Traffic Rank
1. deelip.com 304,406
2. blog.novedge.com 359,282
3. cadblog.net 402,487
4. blog.jtbworld.com 419,361
5. worldcadaccess.typepad.com 500,531
6. dailyautocad.com 584,061
7. rcd.typepad.com/rcd 667,552
8. designandmotion.net 913,304
9. cadpanacea.com 968,201
10. cadinsider.typepad.com 1,038,458
11. blog.cadnauseam.com 1,233,507
12. caddmanager.com/CMB 1,265,876
13. thecadgeek.com 1,624,323
14. cadsetterout.com 1,654,102
15. evanyares.com 2,013,307
16. kungfudrafter.com 2,172,328
17. otb.manusoft.com 3,037,607
18. themadcadder.blogs.com 3,110,767
19. bethscadblog.blogspot.com 3,501,923
20. mistressofthedorkness.blogspot.com 4,365,765
21. opendesignproject.org 4,408,885
22. cadtoolbox.com 4,809,756
23. mikescadblog.com 6,339,456
24. lazydrafter.blogspot.com 6,570,224
25. autocadder.blogspot.com 6,760,523
26. caddhelp.blogspot.com 6,949,802
27. cad-a-blog.com 7,036,703
28. hyperpics.blogs.com 7,380,144
29. cadshack.blogspot.com 7,756,477
30. autocadblockdesign.blogspot.com 7,952,969
31. autocad-for-civils.blogspot.com 8,645,217
32. solidmasters.com 9,327,319
33. cadingandcoding.blogspot.com 11,490,109
34. knowingwhatyoudontknow.blogspot.com 11,813,659
35. cadblog.info 12,377,515
36. besidethecursor.integr-8.com 12,543,852
37. cad-drafting-corner.blogspot.com 13,162,507
38. rockmaster.wordpress.com 16,062,445
39. cadtrainingblog.com 19,834,986

The Global Traffic Rank data from the table above, looks like this in XY graph format:

top-10-cad-blogs-general-may-2011-xy-chart

Comparing the amount of traffic, in terms of percentages, looks like this in pie chart format:

top-10-cad-blogs-general-may-2011-pie-chart

Comparing the amount of traffic, in terms of percentages, looks like this in column graph format:

top-10-cad-blogs-general-may-2011-column-chart

The big winner in the General CAD Blogs category was Deelip Menezes’ blog www.deelip.com (see image below).

deelip.com

Top Ten CAD Blogs As Of May 2011 | Autodesk CAD Blogs

Of the fifty nine (59) Autodesk CAD blogs that I surveyed, fifty one (51) had an Alexa rank. In tabular form, the Alexa Global Traffic Ranks are as follows:

Autodesk CAD Blogs Alexa Global Traffic Rank
1. autodesk.blogs.com 347,818
2. labs.blogs.com 650,043
3. dwf.blogs.com 749,186
4. geospatial.blogs.com 968,570
5. revitclinic.typepad.com 1,127,356
6. through-the-interface.typepad.com 1,177,811
7. lynn.blogs.com 1,234,408
8. heidihewett.blogs.com 1,440,896
9. mayastation.typepad.com 1,524,394
10. thebuildingcoder.typepad.com 1,753,148
11. ltunlimited.typepad.com 1,964,104
12. jamiesjewels.typepad.com 2,064,578
13. underthehood-autodesk.typepad.com 2,555,605
14. autodeskmfg.typepad.com 2,775,142
15. bimandbeam.typepad.com 3,030,252
16. geospatialfrance.typepad.com 3,236,379
17. inthemachine-autodesk.typepad.com 3,403,202
18. withoutanet.typepad.com 3,434,006
19. beingcivil.typepad.com 3,958,397
20. inside-the-system.typepad.com 4,026,370
21. dux.typepad.com 4,035,557
22. petekelsey.typepad.com 4,230,901
23. whatamesh.typepad.com 4,524,524
24. insidethefactory.typepad.com 4,821,210
25. modthemachine.typepad.com 4,983,611
26. inventor-ru.typepad.com 5,420,139
27. crackingthevault.typepad.com 5,543,195
28. bimontherocks.typepad.com 5,771,858
29. in-the-pipes.typepad.com 6,328,953
30. geospatialnavigator.typepad.com 7,491,335
31. ellipsis-autodesk.typepad.com 8,001,211
32. fromthegroundup.typepad.com 8,086,416
33. bimblog.typepad.com 8,246,644
34. atlandsend.typepad.com 8,550,269
35. topobaseinsiders.typepad.com 9,020,335
36. doddsandends.typepad.com 9,455,425
37. engineeringeducation.typepad.com 11,095,385
38. bimapps.typepad.com 11,336,217
39. revit-pl.typepad.com 11,552,428
40. adt_blog.typepad.com 12,205,317
41. philbernstein.typepad.com 14,596,721
42. justonesandzeros.typepad.com 15,480,634
43. upandready.typepad.com 15,942,242
44. morphorm.typepad.com 16,601,093
45. civilfrance.typepad.com 19,938,677
46. cad-botequim.typepad.com 22,191,274
47. familyjewels.typepad.com 23,741,799
48. structurebim.typepad.com 27,453,677
49. classroomconnection.typepad.com 27,668,545
50. gisexchange.typepad.com 28,059,832
51. cadngis.blogspot.com 29,029,298

The Global Traffic Rank data from the table above, looks like this in XY graph format:

top-10-cad-blogs-autodesk-may-2011-xy-chart

Comparing the amount of traffic, in terms of percentages, looks like this in pie chart format:

top-10-cad-blogs-autodesk-may-2011-pie-chart

Comparing the amount of traffic, in terms of percentages, looks like this in column graph format:

top-10-cad-blogs-autodesk-may-2011-column-chart

The big winner in the Autodesk CAD blog category was Shaan Hurley’s blog https://autodesk.blogs.com/ (see image below).

https://autodesk.blogs.com/

Top Ten CAD Blogs As Of May 2011 | General CAD Blogs and Autodesk CAD Blogs Mixed

Originally I was going to create one data set of mixed results between the Autodesk CAD blogs and the independent CAD blogs, but thought that the Autodesk bloggers would crush the independent bloggers, so I separated the two data sets. It turns out that the independent bloggers did better than just hold their own! A number of independent CAD blogs had better Alexa rankings than most of the Autodesk CAD blogs. That was a shocker to me, but perhaps it shouldn’t have been! In light of this, here’s a table of the top ten CAD blogs, when the data sets are combined:

General CAD Blogs and Autodesk CAD Blogs Mixed Alexa Global Traffic Rank
1. deelip.com 304,406
2. autodesk.blogs.com (Autodesk) 347,818
3. blog.novedge.com 359,282
4. cadblog.net 402,487
5. blog.jtbworld.com 419,361
6. worldcadaccess.typepad.com 500,531
7. dailyautocad.com 584,061
8. labs.blogs.com (Autodesk) 650,043
9. rcd.typepad.com/rcd 667,552
10. dwf.blogs.com (Autodesk) 749,186
Conclusion

So there you have it! The Top Ten CAD Blogs As Of May 2011, for the General and Autodesk categories, along with the Mixed results.

p.s. This post is the kick-off article of my brand new blog here on draftingservices.com. I hope you enjoyed it, and I welcome you back anytime!

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About Brian M. Curran

I'm Brian M. Curran and I run a drafting services business in NYC. My aim is to create quality drawings, and to be entrusted with important projects. For some project on-site videos, please visit my Google profile.
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