Disclaimer: Please note I receive a small commission when you purchase from some of the links on this page. You don't pay more when you buy through me; it simply gives me a chance to offer you all this great content for free!

THE BIGGEST TRAVEL BLOG AWARD ON THE INTERNET

Hello travel blogger,

Welcome to the ultimate travel blog evaluation. I analyzed more than 2100 blogs and rated them from 0 to 5 stars. Before I explain WHY  I did this, WHO made it in the list, and most importantly HOW I rated the blogs, I am sure you want to see which award your own travel blog got in our Top 100 Travel Blogs list.

IMPORTANT: This list is neither sorted according to the success of a travel blog nor how SEO friendly it is or its number of facebook fans etc. It only focuses on the travel blog itself and the activity of the travel blogger! It is a very subjective list as it is based on BoB’s, Liane’s and my opinion. BUT there is a quite complex system behind it as we analyzed 7 different categories of each travel blog. You find detailed information about each category at the end of this post.

Okay, enough talking. Here is the list! Please do me a favour and read the information below the list before leaving a comment. And let me know if you want to be in another category. (I have too many solo travel bloggers)

2100+ ANALYZED TRAVEL BLOGS

Couple

Bridges and Balloons – Don’t Forget to Move – Getting Stamped – Goats on the Road – Hecktic Travels – Ordinary Traveler – The Planet D – Uncornered Market – Wanderlusters

Friends

 Alex in Wanderland – Man on the Lam – The Blonde Abroad – That Backpacker

Family

Almost Fearless – Our Oyster – Where’s Sharon – Y Travel

Solo

Be On The Road – Brendan’s Adventures – Everything Everywhere – Ken Kaminesky – Martin Bailey Photography – Stuck In Customs

Photography

Migrationology

Outdoor

 Alastair Humphreys – Pedaling Nowhere – The Adventure Junkies

Budget

Nomadic Matt – The Poor Traveler

Luxury

Holy Smithereens

Destination

CheeseWeb – Drive on the Left – Just 5 More Minutes – Live Less Ordinary

German

Bravebird – Home Is Where Your Bag Is – Off the path –  Planet Backpack – Sonne & Wolken – We travel the world – World meets girl

Top 100

TOP 100 GOLD travel blogs

WHY?

I know this looks like I am totally crazy and that I have too much time, but there are two reasonable reasons why I made this list:

1. There are so many awesome blogs out there but only few poeple recognize them because it needs such a long time to get your blog noticed. I wanted to give new blogs a better chance of being seen as well. You should check out a few travel blogs you have never heard of before; most of them are really amazing!

2. If you want to become a professional travel blogger, you start to realize that other travel bloggers in your niche are not just friends but also “competitors”. A competition check is very very helpful to understand why the top travel blogs are on top and others will probably never reach this level. This list gives everybody an opportunity to compare his or her blog with others of the same niche. I know, I know. Many professional travel bloggers say you should never look at other blogs and just concentrate on your own work. But we are all curious, right? And I can just repeat myself. Checking out other travel blogs will help you to improve yours!

WHO IS IN THE LIST?

For me a travel blog definitively needs personality; a writer readers can identify with. And of course its main focus should be on travel relevant topics.  The language of the blog must be English or German. As we are a trio from Germany I also analyzed some travel blogs from our home country.

WHO IS NOT IN THE LIST?

No commercial websites, community sites, magazines or forums. So, in comparison to some other great travel blog lists e.g.  Top 2300 you won’t find hostelworld.com, workaway.info or travelandleisure.com etc. in this list. (Sorry, even if they have a blog, it is not what I call a personal travel blog).
I also had to kick out every travel blog that has MORE than 3 authors who post on the blog ON A REGULAR BASIS. That’s why a lot of excellent travel blogs are missing in this list. It’s a shame, I know, but it just wouldn’t be fair to compare them with a “normal” personal travel blog as they have much more man power.

HOW DID WE COMPARE THE BLOGS?

As mentioned before, this is an absolute subjective list. If you want to compare travel bloggers by their success, there is just one way to do it: You need to compare the blog’s number of unique visitors or page views. There is only one list I know of which compares exactly these figures. You find it on the blog of The Expeditioner: Top 50.
Every other rating system which compares the numbers of facebook fans, twitter followers or even the Alexa rank, is just bullshit and not reliable.

The categories

We analyzed every travel blog in 7 different categories. You could reach a maximum number of points for each category:

Design (max 15 points)
The first impression is very important. We looked for a trendsetting design which fits the travel blog’s niche. Also if there is some kind of Corporate Identity e.g. the logo, the colors etc. But also if pop-ups (which were most of the time really annoying), e-books etc. are integrated well in the blog’s layout.
Content (max 20 points)
Most important for a good travel blog is, of course, the content. We checked the quality AND quantitiy of pages AND posts. I read at least one featured and one recent post of every travel blog.
Usability / Speed / Visibility (max 15 points)
Readers want to find the information they are looking for in no time. We checked for example the blog’s menu, but also how fast the pages and posts load, and how the blog is displayed on mobile devices and on a different browsers e.g. safari, firefox or mozilla.
Photos / Videos (max 15 points)
Travel blogs should inspire with great stories AND some great pictures/videos. You can, of course, reach the max points without having both, pictures and videos. IMPORTANT: For a photo blog or a vlog the pictures/videos have another evaluation.
Activity (max 20 points)
This is so important for a good blog and I am sure every blogger agrees. A great travel blog needs to publish a new post 2-4 times a week.
Social Media Activity (max 10 points)
Social Media is getting more and more important. 5 posts, shares, tweets or pins per day are the minimum and a MUST nowadays.
Creativity (max 5 points)
While comparing the travel blogs we realized that they very often look the same and write about the same topics. This is absolutely fine! Nobody compares as many travel blogs as we did :). But some travel blogs really surprised us with great ideas and therefore we added this category.

The final rating

If you sum up all the max points, you should get exactly 100 points. All you have to do is to divide the total points by 20 and you’ll get your final result. Some examples:
81 points : 20 = 4,05 Final stars = 4
74 points : 20 = 3,7 Final stars = 3,5
64 points : 20 = 3,2 Final stars = 3

We are rounding up at ,3 / ,4 / ,8 / ,9 and rounding down at ,1 / ,2 / ,6 / ,7

IMPORTANT: Some travel blogs are so great in a certain category that from time to time we gave some EXTRA 5 points. It is not mandatory, but some blogs really blowed us away with their awesome stories or incredible photos etc.

Let me show you an example of how our system works. This is our actual list and the travel blog we are analyzing is our own, BoB around the world. The enumeration is alphabetical.

Brief explanation:

Design:
+The blog’s concept with golf ball BoB is visible everywhere.
+Modern theme with a fullwidth layout which is “up to date”.
– The kind of childish design doesn’t please everyone.
Content:
+The last 40 posts are very informative and helpful,
– but not the first ones when we starteed blogging.
– We are no native English speakers which is quiet obvious and therefore our stories are just okay.
USV:
+ Sticky menu
+ Good mobile site
+ Looks good on almost every screen resolution and browser
– Speed is okay but not the best; just shared server, no CDN, homepage too large etc.
Photos/Videos:
+/- Good photos, okay videos but none is really super awesome
Activity:
+ Activity was better in the last 3 months but
– in total we only postet about 90 posts in 2 years. Not enough.
SM Activity:
+ Post on facebook, twitter, instagram und google+
– but just 6-10 times a day (in total)
Creativity:
+ Unique with BoB
+ How BoB is integrated everywhere in the blog
Special:
+ For creativity

If you have more questions about our rating system, please feel free to leave a comment.

I AM NOT IN THE LIST. WHAT CAN I DO?

I still have over 300 travel blogs on my to-do-list and you are probably one of them. Please leave me a comment and I will put your blog in the list asap.

MY RATING IS TOO LOW. YOU MADE A MISTAKE!

This can, of course, happen. I am just a human, not a machine :). Also some of you updated their blog in the last couple of weeks. (Nomadic Matt for example needed the latest design update of his travel blog to get 5 stars). The difference between for example 3,5 and 4, or 4 and 4,5 stars is very often just one or two points, so yes, it is definitely possible that you deserve a better award.

I would like to kindly ask you to double check your rating with our points system: How often do you post? What about the design? Do you have decent content in your posts or just many pictures? How fast does your blog load? How does it look on mobile devices? etc. etc. If you still think my rating is too low, please leave me a message and I am more than happy to check your blog again.

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO MAKE THE LIST AND WILL YOU MAKE ONE FOR 2016?

It took me more than 3 months to set up this list. I worked on it almost every day for 2-3 hours. (And also BoB and Liane helped me a lot!) I wish I could do such a list again in 2016 but I don’t know if I can handle it again. There are just too many travel bogs out there and I just saw the tip of the iceberg. It was really time-consuming; however, I learned so much about travel blogging with this competition check. So, my clear answer to this question is….maybe 

I WANT TO BE BETTER!

If you agree (more or less) with our ranking of your travel blog and you want to improve it, you have several options. You can go to my “How to become a professional travel blogger” posts which are good for beginners and absolutely free. If you want to push your blog to the next level and you have some coins left, you can find many books, webinars, and blogging courses on the internet. Here are the best all-in-one packages:

Travel blog success
Blog Camp (GER)

FINAL THOUGHTS

I really hope I did not offend anyone out there with my list. It is my/our honest opinion and a 3-star blog is already awesome for family and friends but has so much more potential. As we only know just one travel blogger in person you can be sure that we never gave any travel blogger some kind of a “buddy bonus”.
If you don’t want to see your travel blog here in this list, please let me know (you can also write me an email) and I will delete it right away. However, you should really take the chance and compare your blog with others if you want to have a better blog and more success in your travel blogging career.
By the way: We will not show our detailed list to anyone and I am sorry, but we won’t send you the detailed analysis of your blog. We are working on a concept for an even more detailed analysis including helpful suggestions about how to pimp your blog. The new analysis will probably be available later this year for a reasonable price. Sign up for our newsletter so you won’t miss it.

As always, I am more than happy to answer your questions and I hope you will share this list. Like us on facebook,  twitter and youtube and leave me a comment for the following 3 questions:

a) Does this list make any sense at all?
b) Do you have any ideas how we can improve it?
c) Do you want another list in 2016?

Thank you so much for reading, keep on posting and safe travels!

Yours,
Lars

PS: Feel free to copy your blog award from our page and paste it into your sidebar etc. You don’t have to link it back, but we would highly appreciate it :).