The Wall Street Journal says 32 million people now read blogs:

Some eight million Americans now publish blogs and 32 million people read them, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. What began as a form of public diary-keeping has become an important supplement to a business’s online strategy: Blogs can connect with consumers on a personal level — and keep them visiting a company’s Web site regularly.

Michelle Malkin has some issues with the Journal’s article: How Many Americans Read Blogs? Some of her points (about the difference between “visitors” and “hits,” and the possible amount of crossover traffic among blogs) are accurate, but her calculations of traffic based on Alexa’s statistics have a fatal flaw, leading her to greatly underestimate the actual numbers.

The flaw? Alexa only counts users who have installed their Alexa Toolbar. All of their statistics are based on this small subset of internet users, and they cannot be used to extrapolate to the entire web.

Sitemeter’s visitor counts are much more accurate, since they don’t rely on any external software like Alexa does. And for what it’s worth, I’ve found that the numbers from my own custom-programmed hit counters usually agree pretty closely with Sitemeter’s.

UPDATE at 3/1/05 5:01:03 pm:

In fact, there’s a pretty good argument that more savvy internet people (the kind of people who read blogs) would tend to stay away from Alexa—because Symantec labels the Alexa Toolbar as spyware. (Hat tip: Athos.)