Google recently added a reading level filter to its advanced search features, ranking every webpage with a reading level of "basic," "intermediate," or "advanced." That means we can now compare the reading levels of popular websites, as rated by Google.
The Huffington Post now has more traffic than the New York Times, but which is smarter? Can we settle the Engadget vs. Gizmodo argument once and for all? Is I Can Has Cheezburger smarter than a 5th grader? We've answered these questions with an infographic called "Reading Levels of Popular Websites (According to Google)," which you can check out below.
Google can also look at entire blogging platforms. Where do the wordiest nerds blog? It's easy to find out by comparing blogs hosted on Tumblr, Blogger and Wordpress.com. Of course, each of these sites hosts a wide range of bloggers, but we can make some generalizations. We put those on the chart, too.
Don't get too hung up on these numbers, though, because Google hasn't explained how it calculates reading levels. Who knows how grandiloquent one's proclamations must be to merit an "advanced" rating? We don't, that's for sure: Urlesque is 77% basic.

- more charts:// Who's bigger than Jesus on the internet?





















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12.14.10
By Dan Goodswen
From a usability point of view, the more basic you make the language on your site, the better.
Factoring in general levels of adult literacy and internet literacy, the easier your site is to read, the easier it is to use, the better experience will be had by your user.
In turn this means the success of your website should be greater.
This doesn't just apply to blogs or lower-brow websites, studies by Jakob Nielson have shown that even medical professionals appreciate simply writing on industry-specific websites.
In print people want more complex language, but online studies have shown that you should be writing your homepage for 13 year-olds, and your article pages for 11 year-olds.
The more simple and easy you can make your site to use, the more successful you should be.
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