Blogging BS

Robert Jago is without doubt one of the quality bloggers in Canada. But his "ranking" of blogs is not only highly subjective, but also based on totally unreliable data, and therefore complete rubbish.

Problem number 1:

Robert selects the blogs he includes in his "ranking" manually – a subjective choice. If a pollster excluded, for example, the Conservative Party from the choices given to respondents, even Dion could come out the winner.

Problem number 2:

Both Alexa and Google Page Rankings are completely unreliable because they capture only a tiny fraction of site traffic. For these services to work, users must have the corresponding widgets installed in their browser. Most people, myself included, don't because these widgets give rise to considerable privacy concerns. In other words, anyone who has the Alexa or Google Page widgets installed is a fool and asking for trouble.

I recognize that some filtering must be done, since there are zillions of blogs out there. But that doesn't change the fact that Robert's selection is extremely subjective.

So where would we get an exhaustive list of blogs? Essentially, one would have to go through search engines and pick out every single blog – and that would take years, if not decades.

Aggregators are not reliable sources either because not every political blogger in Canada belongs to one. And forget about the silly Blogs Canada: For years now, that site has not taken any new listings, despite a notice that they were going to relaunch the site (that was several years ago).

Quite frankly, there should be a ranking compiled by the same services that track the readership of newspapers and magazines. Even though any "circulation figures" for blogs would also be insufficiently accurate, such an attempt would, at least, be more reliable than Robert's hodgepodge.

Comments

[dinosaur]

"Robert selects the blogs he includes in his "ranking" manually – a subjective choice."

Not true I emailed him to get myself put on the list and some months I make it. Others I've emailed don't. He knows there are others out there who he might have missed so he routinely asks.

re the BBM guys I routinely lie to them to tell them I'm listening to radio stations I like vs listening to music I won. I would think they are far less perfect than alexa, but last time I filled one out I put small dead animals on it. thats the thing is that 3 blogs ever have given me a lot of hits Kate @ SDA Mark Steyn and Kathy Shaidle, It's funny when a blog that will send 10 hits over or less will be close to SDA who on a good day sent over a thousand. It might not be perfect but what's better? To make everyone use bluehost and see their hits? Bluehost doesn't even balance with itself. A man with one hit counter/watch knows what time it is.

[Werner Patels]

Only proves my point. A political party doesn't have to ask the pollster to be included in the choices put before respondents either, nor does a newspaper or magazine.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate Robert's efforts, but it's rubbish all the same -- and he probably only does it, hyping the hell out of it, so that he can use it to drive up traffic to his site by an artificially inflated claim to "authority" or whatever you want to call it.

[Pete Quily]

I agree that Alexa's not really that accurate, try googling "how accurate is Alexa".

For an example of more comprehensive online metrics, consider checking out the criteria that Vancouver based NowPublic used in creating it's most public index for Vancouver's 20 most visible individuals on the web in partnership the with Vancouver Sun. Here's their list of 20
http://www.nowpublic.com/mostpublic/list/vancouver

While they also used Alexa, they added a lot of other measurements. Here's the metrics they used to create the list
http://www.nowpublic.com/mostpublic/list/info

Their "formula gauges influence and “publicness” across four categories, including:

* Online Visibility
* Presence on User-Generated Content and Social Networking Sites
* Interactivity and Accessibility
* The “R” Factor: Presence on Microblogging Platforms (Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.)

NowPublic examined statistics in each of these categories from Alexa, Compete, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Quantcast, Technorati, YouTube, and various other blogs and sites, to create a list of Los Angeles’ leading influencers. It then narrowed the list to 20 by analyzing and documenting individuals’ presence and popularity in each of these channels, applying a weighted scoring system, determined by the strength of specific traits held in each online community."

It may take too much time to use all of their metrics and no matter which ones you use, it will never be perfect, but adding a few more metrics would help.