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What are the most popular places that people go to talk or learn about health / fitness on the internet?
Hello! Thanks for your question about the top websites where people go to learn about fitness. The short version is that Livestrong, Body Building, My Fitness Pal, Everyday Health, Men's Health, Prevention, Men's Fitness, Greatist, Spark People, and Muscle and Fitness are the most popular sites for fitness education. Below you will find a deep dive of my findings.
METHODOLOGY
I and my coworkers searched through news periodicals, fitness industry blogs, and website traffic aggregators for lists of popular exercise and fitness websites that provided educational information. We searched for diet and exercise sites, websites of trainers, and community websites dedicated to health and fitness. This netted a list of thirty websites.
From there I used the website traffic database site Similarweb to see how much traffic each site had received during a six-month period in 2016. This would give a good indication of the popularity of the wide variety of sites. A unique Wonder list usually comprises 10 items, so I have provided a list of the top ten websites that provide fitness education, ranked according to their popularity.
With this list, I then researched each site to ascertain what information and services were provided. I checked to see if the site had a community section and message boards. Finally, I looked to see if the service offered was free or paid.
I listed my results below according to how many visits each site had from June 2016 to November 2016. I also provided a short summary of the site and the information I discovered.
CALCULATIONS
To ascertain the total number of visitors each site had, I added up the number of visits each site had according to Similarweb.
For example:
Total number of visitors to Livestrong.com =
visitors in June '16 + visitors in July '16 + visitors in August '16 + visitors in September '16 + visitors in October '16 + visitors in November '16
Total number of visitors to Livestrong.com = 63.3 Million + 68.6 Million + 70.3 Million + 61.7 Million + 54.8 Million + 50.7 Million
Total number of visitors to Livestrong.com = 369.4 Million
This calculation was done for all ten websites with the results posted below.
RESULTS
This massive site has a plethora of articles on dieting and exercise. They offer a meal and calorie tracking tool to help users meet their fitness goals. The system allows users to share information and goals allowing users to access additional information and keep themselves accountable to their goals. While the basic service is free, they offer a Gold Membership that provides a private support group, curated meal lists, better fitness stat tracking, no ads, and priority support.
While inexhaustibly a commercial fitness products store front, Body Builder also offers a massive collection of articles and videos on all aspects of diet and exercise. They also offer customized fitness plans and have a message board with many active users exchanging information on various aspects of healthy living. Additionally, Body Building provides several different apps to assist users in meeting their fitness goals. The site is primarily supported by ads and product sales and appears to be free for users to utilize.
This site is geared toward people trying to lose weight. It provides excellent tools for tracking calorie intake. The app supports barcode scanning for nutritional information and has a pedometer function to keep track of walking. The site also has extensive tools to track calories loss through exercise. The site also provides a massive database of crowd-sourced nutritional information for various restaurants, dishes, and ingredients. In additional to nutritional information, the site has a large database of different types of exercises and a rough idea of how many calories are burned during a workout. There is a large community that provides information and support. My Fitness Pal offers both free and premium memberships. The paid membership gives better tracking tools, personalized plans, and removes ads.
This site is a general health information website and includes large amounts of information on all aspects of healthy living, including diet and exercise. The free service also has a message board where users can exchange information and connect users to experts in various health related fields.
While ostensibly marketed toward men, this site also has fitness information for women. This site is the online site of the magazine of the same name. Most of the articles are available for free. The site does have a message board that is available to users who create a free account.
Prevention is the website of the magazine of the same name. The site pushes subscriptions, but most of the information is available for free. The information provided covers all aspects of health, including medical advice as well as diet and exercise. The site doesn't appear to offer a message board or forum.
This is the website of the lifestyle magazine of Men's Fitness. The site provides articles on training, nutrition, women, lifestyle, videos, sports, and weightless. While the site doesn't seem to have a dedicated message board, it does have a presence on the major social media sites where users can interact with each other. The site allows free access to most of its content but pushes paid subscriptions to the magazine.
This site is a health focused lifestyle website. They have a news feed of articles related to healthy eating, exercise, and lifestyle articles. Site access is free and appears to be ad supported. Greatist doesn't have a message board or forum, but users can interact with each other on the Facebook page of the site.
This site houses a large database of information on healthy living but seems to focus more on eating well. They offer customized dieting plans and have a robust online community. The site is built on building a community to help users meet their dieting goals. They also provide tools to track calories and exercising as well as a host of communication tools to help users interact with the community. The service is free and doesn't seem to offer any premium or paid membership level.
This website is the online presence of the Muscle and Fitness magazine. The site offers online access to many of the magazine's articles on bodybuilding exercises and diets. While most of the articles are free to access, the site heavily pushes subscription to their magazine. The site doesn't appear to offer any community tools like message boards or forums.
SUMMARY
To wrap it up, Livestrong, Body Building, My Fitness Pal, Everyday Health, Men's Health, Prevention, Men's Fitness, Greatist, Spark People, and Muscle and Fitness were some of the most popular sites for fitness education. Livestrong alone had 369.4 Million visitors over a six-month period in 2016.
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