Top 10 US Chile/Hot Sauce Websites

Site Alexa U.S. Links In
scottrobertsweb.com 225,783 52,593 112
hotsauceblog.com 234,102 53,030 222
thehotpepper.com 289,934 97,191 90
chileunderground.com 310,451 73,400 21
thehotzoneonline.com 334,891 85,143 86
fiery-foods.com 368,481 123,418 458
peppersandmore.com 407,106 90,901 10
hookedonheat.com* 563,989 75,352 294
tastethefear.com 726,294 184,247 17
eatmoreheat.com 848,462 241,959 n/a
hotsaucedaily.com 937,687 341,880 54

After looking at The ChileFoundry's list of top 10 UK chilli web sites based on Alexa stats, it got me curious as to what were the most trafficked U.S. chile/hot sauce sites. Now, the UK list included shopping sites as well as blogs, fansites, etc. To call the act of compiling a list of American sites where products are sold "daunting" would be a gross understatement. There could be hundreds of potential e-commerce destinations that dabble in spicy foods, and even if I would spend days or weeks scouring the internet I would no doubt miss several good ones.

Instead, I gathered the stats for the top U.S. blogs and chilehead forums.

Before you read any further or compare the stats, please keep in mind that the data collected by Alexa is rough at best. But unless all of the sites voluntarily give up their analytics data (and I wouldn't ever expect them to ever do so), this is as probably as best as we can get to halfway decent comparative traffic data.

The number in the "Alexa" column is the site's rank out of all websites in the world, and the "U.S." column gives the site's Alexa rank for visitors located in the United States. "Links In" denotes the number external sites linking into that particular site. Multiple links from one site are only counted once.

*HookedOnHeat.com is a fine site, but it's technically not a hot sauce/chile pepper site the way the others are; it's a blog specializing in Indian cuisine. It also originates from Ontario; and while I love our Canadian neighbors to the north, it's technically not a U.S. site. If you think either of these should exclude the site from contention, then hotsaucedaily.com would clock in at #10.

There are lots of other good chile blogs I occasionally check out, but many did not have the traffic to crack the top 10. Sites that infrequently feature fiery products and recipes (like general foodie sites), hot wings or general BBQ sites are not included.

Lastly, I have to mention that just because a site gets a lot of traffic doesn't necessarily mean it's better than a less-trafficked website. It's up to you to inspect and see what sites are interesting and worthwhile to you.


Related Articles:
Scott Roberts #1 Search Result in Google, Yahoo!, and Ask.com
Hot Sauce and Hot Pepper Sites You Should Not Miss
More Hot Sauce and Hot Pepper Sites You Should Visit




     Comments

Comment Jay Calvert
2009-11-27 07:19:32
Good work Scott! You should be very proud
Comment Scott Roberts
2009-11-27 19:53:23
I'm just humbled to be included amongst some very good sites.
Comment Dave DeWitt
2009-11-28 02:56:12
Hello Scott:

This is very interesting, but you don't indicate the time period, or whether the count is hits, visits, or page views. I've found Alexa and Google Analytics consistently under-report traffic. We use the internal statistics program Webalizer. Just for the edification of you and your readers, here was the SuperSite traffic for October, 2009:
Visits: 160,905
Page Views: 1,975,718

Dave
Comment Scott Roberts
2009-11-28 17:00:03
Dave, Alexa only provided the above stats on their website. Alexa tends to average their numbers over a three month period. Without them having direct access to the webpage code, they couldn't figure out individual hits or pageviews. Like I said before, it's rough at best. It shouldn't be used for anything official.

Analytics tools like Webalizer (which is installed directly on the web server) and Google Analytics (if it's set up right in on each web page) can provide far more accurate stats. I've used both on 20+ websites and they're very close in calculating the numbers.
Comment Peppers and More
2009-11-29 09:44:09
Dave...

Its ok we all know you have a big site.Thanks again for sharing your stats..

JBJ

www.peppersandmore.com
Comment Nick1987
2009-12-01 19:58:31
Congrats Scott! You have a great site.

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