Most places I saw rank the countries by count of gold medal first, then silver then bronze, why do US websites go by total medal count by default?

I think its because of the sheer number of athletes that the US sends to the Olympics. Because of the large number of athletes, people are more concerned with the large number of medals first (success percentage) and what they were second (quality percentage). I’m not sure if anyone other than the US does it this way, but I would imagine that other countries with large numbers of athletes would do the same.