20 Of The Most Popular Nursing Websites And Who Owns Them
Registered Nurse is the fifth largest occupation in the United States according to the U.S. Department of Labor. It’s also the only occupation in the top 10 with average earnings that are well above the country’s average. It’s no wonder that there are tons of websites devoted to nursing. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at 20 of the most popular nursing websites and who owns them.
Ranking Popular Nursing Websites
To develop this list, we conducted research to find hundreds of popular nursing websites. We ran each one through a service called Alexa in order to get an idea of how much traffic they received. Alexa is a service that is owned by Amazon. One of the main things Alexa does is to rank websites based on the traffic they receive.
To do this, Alexa tracks the web activity of individuals using their Alexa Browser Toolbar. Basically, internet users can install the Alexa toolbar on their browsers. Then, when they surf the web, the toolbar tracks where they go and Alexa is able to develop an idea of how much traffic websites are getting.
Alexa estimates that it’s toolbar is installed on 1 in every 1,000 browsers in America. While that might not seem like a lot, consider that national polls are deemed valid if they include 1,000 or more respondents. That said, there are certainly criticisms of Alexa and we discuss those at the end of the article for anyone interested. Additionally, we included one other criteria which we also describe below.
In order to make this list, the website had to be ranked by Alexa in the top 100,000 of all websites in America. So the Alexa ranking that we have listed for each site is their ranking in America, not their world ranking. This list was compiled on June 24, 2015 and it’s important to note that the rankings are constantly changing as websites gain and lose traffic based on a variety of issues. Here’s the list we came up with!
1) AllNurses.com
Alexa Ranking: 3,301
Ownership: AllNurses.com is privately owned and operated. The website was started in 1994 by then nursing student Brian Short. He currently serves as the company’s CEO and the company reported having 4 full time employees as of May, 2014.
AllNurses.com is a forum website. Like other forum websites, registered users are able to create new topics and engage in conversations on those topics. Users can create unique user names that allow them to maintain their anonymity, or they can use their real names. With few exceptions, forum topics and discussions are made public which means they are indexed by search engines and can be viewed by anyone whether they are registered with the website or not.
AllNurses.com provides nurses with a support network, and allows them to exchange industry and career related information and advice. The site also advertises job postings. According to Alexa, the site currently gets over 3 million monthly unique visitors and 10 million monthly pageviews. That’s a lot! The website states it has over 900,000 registered members and they have a Facebook Fan-page with over 340,000 likes.
2) ATItesting.com
Alexa Ranking: 8,537
Ownership: ATItesting.com is owned by Assessment Technologies Institute, LLC.
ATItesting.com is the portal for Assessment Technologies Institute, LLC. The company offers nursing education delivery systems for schools and faculty and preparation courses for nursing students. NCLEX test prep is a big part of what they provide.
3) NursingWorld.org
Alexa Ranking: 13,824
Ownership: This is the website of the American Nurses Association, a full service professional organization representing the interests of America’s registered nurses.
As the website for the largest professional organization for nurses, NursingWorld.org provides information on a wide range of topics including careers and credentialing, practice, ethics, health, safety, policy, advocacy, and more.
4) Nurse.com
Alexa Ranking: 16,877
Ownership: Nurse.com is owned and operated by OnCourse Learning, which is one of the largest continuing education companies in the industry.
Nurse.com provides a host of services including job postings, continuing education unit courses, nursing related news, and an event calendar for seminars, webinars and career fairs. Nurses can create a profile which can be kept private, public, or viewable to employers only. Be sure to read their privacy policy so that you know exactly how they use the information you store on their site.
5) ScrubsMag.com
Alexa Ranking: 19,128
Ownership: ScrubsMag.com and it’s print magazine counterpart Scrubs are owned and operated by Strategic Partners, Inc. Strategic Partners manufactures and markets medical uniforms, medical foot-ware and school uniforms.
ScrubsMag.com describes itself as “the nurse’s guide to good living.” The website provides information on a wide range of topics including career advice, nursing school, beauty, style, health, fun, quizzes and giveaways. They have many Registered Nurses that contribute articles and serve as editorial advisers. Scrubs has a Facebook fan-page with over 317,000 likes.
6) Medscape.com/Nurses
Alexa Ranking: 807
Ownership: Medscape is owned by WebMd which is a publicly traded company providing health related news, advice and expertise.
We’re sort of taking a guess on this one. The Alexa Ranking is for Medscape.com which accounts for all services under the scope of the website. The nursing portal is just one part of the whole service.
That said, the nursing portal offers tons of great industry reporting on recent advancements, new studies, and expert information on healthcare topics directly related to the nursing field. The site also provides drug calculators, a drug interaction checker, a pill identifier and tons of other useful tools. To top it all off, they also provide CME and Education content.
7) AACN.org
Alexa Ranking: 24,539
Ownership: AACN.org is the website of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, a specialty nursing organization representing the interests of nurses who care for acute and critically ill patients.
AACN.org provides a litany of information relevant to critical care nurses and the organization in general. The site provides Evidenced-Based Resources, Clinical Toolkits, information about grants, standards and various policy related issues. It’s also a membership site for organization members.
8) NursingCenter.com
Alexa Ranking: 32,029
Ownership: NursingCenter.com is owned by Wolters Kluwer which is a global publishing company.
The thrust of NursingCenter.com is to provide access to peer reviewed journal articles from more than 50 nursing journals. Most of what’s available requires payment to access. However, there are tons of free articles that are certainly useful and enriching. Visitors can access the Wolters Kluwer Continuing Education portal through NursingCenter.com. Finally, NursingCenter has a blog with tons of clinical and technical articles.
9) MightyNurse.com
Alexa Ranking: 32,727
Ownership: MightyNurse.com is owned by Shiftwise, Inc which is a company that provides workforce management software to the healthcare industry. In turn, Shiftwise is owned by AMN Healthcare Services which is the largest healthcare staffing company in the nation.
MightyNurse.com advertises itself as “A team of nursing super heroes” with a mission to support and empower nurses. The website provides nursing related articles, cartoons, a tattoo gallery, videos and a forum. Nursing members can submit their personal stories and blog posts for publication on the site. MightyNurse also advertises jobs and has a Facebook Fanpage with over 645,000 likes…which is the most of any website on this list by far!
10) NurseCredentialing.org
Alexa Ranking: 34,512
Ownership: NurseCredentialing.org is the website of the American Nurses Credentialing Center which a subsidiary of the American Nurses Association.
NurseCredentialing.org is without a doubt the most prominent website dedicated to nursing related certifications. The ANCC handles specialty certifications for individual nurses as well organization level certifications such as its renowned Magnet Certification. As such, the website provides tons of useful information about these topics.
11) AANP.org
Alexa Ranking: 37,038
Ownership: AANP.org is the website of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners which is a professional membership organization for Nurse Practitioners of all specialties.
AANP.org provides a wealth of information related to NPs. The site provides information on public policy related to scope of practice and other issues impacting NPs. It provides technical information on healthcare conditions as well as other educational information. Interested parties can find information about Fellowship programs through the site and members can access the organization’s in-depth research reports.
BluePipes: Professional Networking and Career Management Tools for Healthcare Professionals
12) NursingTimes.net
Alexa Ranking: 45,892
Ownership: NursingTimes.net is published by EMAP Publishing Limited which is one of the largest publishing houses in the United Kingdom.
NursngTimes.net is a website designed for nurses in the UK. However, there are obviously many similarities between nursing in the UK and nursing in America. As a result, the website is quite popular with American nurses as well. The site provides articles on nursing care delivery, health related issues, opinion pieces, book reviews and much more.
13) BestNursingDegree.com
Alexa Ranking: 46,579
Ownership: As far as we can tell, BestNursingDegree.com is a privately held website.
BestNursingDegree.com appears to be one of the most trafficked web portals focused on nursing education. The site allows visitors to conveniently look up nursing schools by state. The site has tons of useful and insightful articles about nursing care and related issues. There are also interviews with nurses of all types as well nursing school Deans and faculty members.
14) NurseTogether.com
Alexa Ranking: 52,757
Ownership: NurseTogether.com is owned by Cirrus Medical Staffing which is a healthcare staffing company specializing in travel nursing and travel allied placement.
Nursetogether.com advertises nursing education institutions as well as jobs. However, the vast majority of the site’s traffic is driven by its blog. The blog publishes articles that provide advice on career related documentation, tips to avoid burnout, tips to achieve career success, and humorous insights on nursing.
Visitors can create a member profile and add a host of personal and career related details to it. The member profile allows visitors to comment on blog posts. Be sure to review the privacy policy as it currently indicates that your data can be shared with third parties.
15) DiscoverNursing.com
Alexa Ranking: 52,853
Ownership: Owned by Johnson and Johnson, a healthcare company that provides healthcare consumer items, medical devices and pharmaceutical products.
DiscoverNursing.com is an offshoot of the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation’s “Campaign for Nursing’s Future.” The Campaign was initiated in 2002 when government and industry organizations were projecting a national nursing shortage by the year 2025. Its goal is to attract more people to the nursing profession in order to bridge the projected gap. These and similar efforts may have achieved success as the Federal Government is now projecting a nursing surplus by the year 2025.
DiscoverNursing.com offers detailed information about nursing specialties, career paths, salary information, nurse interviews and much more. Of course, they also have very useful resources for those who are interested in becoming a nurse, including a tracker of nursing schools without a waiting list.
16) AmericanNurseToday.com
Alexa Ranking: 57,674
Ownership: American Nurse Today is the official journal of the American Nurses Association. The website is the online portal for the print journal. Both are run by HealthCom Media, a media company specializing in the medical field.
AmericanNurseToday.com is literally packed with information for nurses of all types. They publish their journal articles on the site so there are tons of detailed articles including references which is a big plus for anyone doing research on a particular topic. They also post articles by clinical specialty, and have great articles on subjects outside of clinical issues but still very important to nurses such as professional development, legal issues, ethical issues and much more.
17) NSNA.org
Alexa Ranking: 89,966
Ownership: NSNA.org is the website for the National Student Nurses Association.
NSNA.org provides information related to the association including a calendar of events, bylaws, policies, resolutions and other pertinent information.
18) RN.com
Alexa Ranking: 92,719
Ownership: RN.com is owned by AMN Healthcare Services, the nation’s largest medical staffing company.
RN.com offers nursing education and nursing news. Many nurses use the service to take care of their CEU requirements. The site routinely offers a small number of free courses and they offer unlimited CEUs for $37.95 for a full year. However, be sure to review their privacy policy and watch out for opt-in check-boxes that are checked by default. You may unknowingly agree to have American Mobile and all it’s subsidiaries contact you.
19) TheNerdyNurse.com
Alexa Ranking: 92,936
Ownership: TheNerdyNurse.com is owned and operated by Brittney Wilson, BSN, RN through her company The Nerdy Nurse, LLC.
TheNerdyNurse.com includes wonderful articles with insights on technology from a nurse’s perspective. There are articles about apps and gadgets that are both directly and indirectly related to the nursing profession. There are also articles on EMR/EHR, patient care, health, nursing issues, products, women’s issues, empowerment and much more. Brittney does an amazing job managing this website and she has also written a book called “The Nerdy Nurse’s Guide to Technology” which has received great reviews on Amazon. It’s great to see a blog created by a Registered Nurse on this list!
20) NurseZone.com
Alexa Ranking: 97,640
Ownership: NurseZone.com is owned by AMN Healthcare Services, better known as American Mobile, the largest healthcare staffing company in the nation.
NurseZone.com provides nurses with “professional and personal development information and opportunities.” The website has tons of useful information on career management including interviewing tips, resume information, networking and more. The site also has a resume builder for registered members. They have job posting as well. They also have information on nursing career related issues and they report on research, trends and healthcare related issues as well. Again, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the privacy policy when joining the site to ensure you know how your information will be used.
About The Ranking System
As mentioned above, we used Alexa rankings to create this list of nursing websites. Alexa has its share of critics. They argue that the service doesn’t provide very accurate rankings for two reasons. First, they don’t think Alexa has a big enough sample size or a sample that is representative of all internet users. As a result, they argue that Alexa really only reports the activity of a small and unique set of internet users.
Second, they argue that a website owner can install the Alexa toolbar on their own browser and throw the results off for their webpage by visiting it all the time. This is a valid argument. There is nothing stopping a website owner from installing the toolbar and visiting their own website all day long which would make it look as though the site was getting a lot of traffic.
As a result, we used a second tool to help strengthen our rankings. The tool we used tracks the number of keywords that a website ranks for in Google. Our logic is that Google drives a lot of web traffic to web sites, so if a website ranks highly for a lot of search terms then they should be receiving a fair amount of traffic.
Therefore, we required that the website rank highly for at least 500 search terms in the tool we used to measure this. This actually disqualified 3 websites, all of which ranked for very few search terms.
As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic! Tell us about your experiences on these websites! Did we miss one of your favorites? Let us know in the comments section below.
