So why is Bleach in the big three? (I swear Im not attacking Bleach Fans or any fandom)

I hear this common statement that the big three is always Naruto, Bleach & One Piece. However you ask someone why the big three is the big three. You likely will have heard that its because they dominated the manga sales.

Now this is simply false, If you look at the Oricorn sales data provided from 2008 (It starts at 2008) to 2016 (When Bleach Ended).

Oricon Yearly Data

2008
One Piece
Naruto
Bleach is 5th Place

2009
The Big Three in 1st, 2nd and 3rd

2010
One Piece
Naruto
Bleach is 5th

2011
One Piece
Naruto
Bleach is 8th

2012
One Piece
Naruto is 3rd
Bleach is 12th

2013
One Piece
Naruto is 5th
Bleach is 15th

2014. (Naruto ended here)
      One Piece
      Naruto was 6th
      Bleach was 18th

2015
One Piece
Naruto was 14th
Bleach was 21

2016 (Here Bleach ended)
One Piece
Bleach is 17th

2017
One Piece
Naruto & Bleach not there and Im not counting Boruto

So the big three were the Big Three for like 1 year. Naruto was consistently 2nd the first few years, then fell off and One Piece dominated based on the data.

I then thought maybe the data was skewed? I mean the Manga started in 2001 and Anime for it started in 2004. So maybe the manga sales for it was consistently higher in those years?

However thats ignoring Naruto, One Piece, Death Note, FMA runs some ending before even 2008. So it would equally up to interpretation if bleach was top 3 in those years. its simply just unknown.

I then looked at other Manga from 2008-2016 to see if any manga got better than bleach on average. Im going to get a lot of shit for this, However From literally 2010 to 2016 you can check this Fairy tail was always a position higher than bleach in the rankings. however even at its best it couldnt crack top 3

There also was this short period where AOT came 2nd twice i guess?

Honestly every manga was inconsistent, in the oricon rankings with the exception of One Piece and the brief starting of Naruto being 2nd place.

Unless there is some other statistic people are using to measure bleach I really fail to see how the reasoning of sales figures were the reason its got its status as the big three

I also saw another reason that being it was due to cultural impact or influence but at that time period i fail to see how that would even be measured and that seems to be a very subjective metric to measure it. Though I guess it wouldnt be outlandish to say Bleach did inspire some new gen like Black Clover, Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer...etc

If anyone can let me know please do let me know