| 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.