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The 20 Most Influential Beer Websites in the World (2015)

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One year ago we created the first-ever analysis of the most influential beer websites in the world. Below is an updated version for 2015.

Our analysis includes three factors:

  • Alexa Rating: While this is not a perfect indicator of a website’s popularity, it is easy to access and relatively accurate.
  • Facebook Likes: Given the influence of social media, we considered the number of Facebook likes.
  • Twitter Followers: The same goes for Twitter.

We dropped incoming links as a factor in this year’s analysis because Google’s tool for this as become increasingly inaccurate. We analyzed a total of 85 popular English-language beer-related websites. We allocated from 25 to 1 points for each time a site was in the top 25 of one of the above three factors. In other words, the website with the best Alexa rating received 25 points and the website with the 25th best Alexa rating received one point. With three categories, the maximum score is 75. We recorded data on January 1, 2015.

20 Most Influential Beer Websites in the World

RankCompanyWebsiteScore
1Heinekenwww.heineken.com63
2Beer Advocatehttp://beeradvocate.com57
3Dogfish Head Craft Brewerywww.dogfish.com52
4New Belgium Brewingwww.newbelgium.com/50
5Stone Brewing Companyhttp://stonebrewing.com/48
6Bud Lightwww.budlight.com45
7 tieBudweiserwww.budweiser.com42
7 tieCoors Lightwww.coorslight.com42
9Miller Litewww.millerlite.com41
10Untappedhttp://untappd.com/29
11Sierra Nevada Brewing Companywww.sierranevada.com28
12Rogue Aleswww.rogue.com26
13Samuel Adamswww.samueladams.com25
14 tieDrink Craft Beerwww.drinkcraftbeer.com24
14 tieBJ's Brewhousehttp://bjsbrewhouse.com/24
14 tieDos Equiswww.dosequis.com24
14 tieBrewDogwww.brewdog.com24
14 tieRateBeer.comwww.ratebeer.com24
19 tieGuinnesswww.guinness.com22
19 tieMore Beer!www.morebeer.com22

Our top three websites:

  • Heineken remains the Most Influential Beer Website in the World with 63 out of a possible 75 points. It dominates in number of Facebook fans (over 19 million), scored fifth in Alexa rating, and rated 9th in the number of Twitter followers.
  • Beer Advocate magazine again took the number two spot, scoring first in both Alexa rating  with a score of 6,832 (meaning it is the 6,832nd most popular website in the world but the most popular beer website in terms of visitors that use the Alexa toolbar) and number of Twitter followers (490,054).
  • Dogfish Head surpassed New Belgium Brewing as the third-most influential beer website primarily because we dropped the Google incoming links factor, which favored New Belgium.

Other interesting facts about the analysis:

  • The average Alexa rating of the top 25 most popular beer websites is 17% lower than last year. This means the most popular beer websites are 17% more popular than last year compared to all other websites in the world. This is pretty amazing, especially since the number of websites increases every year.
  • The sum of Facebook fans of the top 25 most popular beer websites on Facebook grew from 56 million to 62 million, while the sum of Twitter followers grew from 2.2 million to 3.2 million, a 45% increase in just one year.
  • Big brewery websites dominate in terms of Facebook fans. Budweiser, Bud Light, Guinness, Coors Light, Dos Equis, Miller Light, Carlsberg, Corona, and Tiger Beer are the top 10, all with over one million fans.
  • However, craft breweries take three of the top five spots in the rankings (Dogfish Head, New Belgium, and Stone) thanks in part because only Miller Lite out of the big boys competes with them in terms of Twitter followers. Why this is, we don’t know.

Please remember the following.

  1. We undoubtedly made mistakes. Take a look at the data (Most Influential Beer Websites Analysis), which shows only those sites receiving a score, and please provide any corrections or sites we are missing so we can update future versions.
  2. This analysis is a snap shot in time. The stats change daily. We’ll do this analysis again next year.
  3. Deciding what factors into the ranking is arbitrary. We know Alexa rating is biased towards a certain type of site visitor and realize social media plays heavily into these results. We are open to other suggestions but think this is a good start.

Please tell us what you think!

Note: If you appreciate the time and effort we put into this analysis, please consider promoting this post on Facebook or Twitter. You can follow Zephyr Adventures or the Beer Bloggers Conference on Twitter and like us on Facebook (Zephyr, Beer Bloggers Conference). Who knows? Perhaps some year we’ll make our own list.

The Latest

Hiring Digital Marketing Manager for Zephyr United (Our Tour Division)

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Taste Vacations (or, more specifically, our overarching travel company, Zephyr United Travel Collection, which is our sister company) is hiring a new office employee to conduct the marketing for all three of our travel brands.

As you probably know, Zephyr United is a small company. We currently have 4.5 full-time employees (including Allan), and one of those positions is left vacant by our Marketing Lead to pursue a new career path.

We are specifically looking for an individual with marketing experience, preferably in the travel industry. The individual also needs to have an outgoing, caring, fun personality, as all our office staff also guide tours. The pay is not going to make you rich, but the lifestyle benefits are superb. Plus, you can work where you live as we gave up our brick-and-mortar office long ago (way before the pandemic).

Do you know someone who might be interested? Please refer them to the job description and application form. Application deadline is August 10.

Comments

  1. John says

    Allan-thanks so much for this post. We own the domain ChinaBrewers,com and were looking for ideas to develop it-this really helps. Thank you

    • Allan says

      Thanks for your interest in our analysis, Ron. We do have these sites in our statistics. Brewbound doesn’t rate in the top 25 of Alexa, Facebook, or Twitter. CraftBeer.com rates as 10th in Alexa but not in the social media. Draft Mag rates as 22nd in both Alexa and Twitter, not enough to place them in the top 20 either. The Full Pint doesn’t rate in the top 25 in any of the three categories.

      We could put out an analysis of just Alexa ratings but that would not be nearly so interesting.

  3. matt says

    Thanks for compiling this. Good conversation starter.
    One point of feedback: Perhaps the article title could be more accurate: with such a significant focus on Facebook (correlated to mass-appeal marketing dollars?) and twitter (correlated to authentic, interesting personalities?). Neither of those seem to have a significant correlation to how influential any particular beer brand’s stand-alone website is. At least in comparison in to other basic website metrics. Right? Just throwing that out there.

    • Allan says

      Excellent point. How about “The 20 Most Influential Beer Brands on the Internet”?

      Allan

    • Allan says

      Yes, we thought of that. But it more than anything represents a snapshot in time – one day, Jan 1, 2015. So it is really neither 2014 nor 2015.

  5. Nathan says

    Wow this is a pretty cool analysis. And SUPER interesting that the beer website are 17% more popular from last year. Holy moly!

    Too bad MicroBrewr didn’t make it. :,(
    haha JK

    But here’s a link anyway:
    http://microbrewr.com

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