Tumeke's blog rankings came out last night and NZ Conservative has slipped a few places over the last two months down to Number 21. I can't say I'm surprised as I haven't been posting much lately due to needing some down time from the internet.
But Tim Selwyn has raised an interesting point about using Alexa for traffic. I can't see how Alexa could in any way be reliable. When I compare what Alexa says about our traffic compared to Stat Counter, the latter is lower. Of course, that could have something to do with how a unique visitor is counted, and I must confess I haven't looked it how our visitors are counted beyond ZenTiger telling me a while back that he'd changed it.
The weird thing also is that the Technorati authority for our blog is currently sitting at 54, which is reasonable. And when I look at the higher volume blogs (ie those with a large number of commenters) that have a higher authority than us, that makes sense. What doesn't totally make sense are those in the top 20 whose authorities are quite low.
It also looks to me that if I sat here churning out post after post, that I could actually artificially inflate our rankings. However, doing that would drastically change the nature of our blog, as posts that people might be commenting on would get pushed down and therefore almost forgotten. One to four blog posts a day is probably the most we would want to do on that basis.
So, I'm curious as to how people think the blogosphere ought to be ranked, if the formula used is a good one or if there is some better indicator?
Related Link: NZ Blogosphere Rankings May 2008 ~ NZ Blogosphere
But Tim Selwyn has raised an interesting point about using Alexa for traffic. I can't see how Alexa could in any way be reliable. When I compare what Alexa says about our traffic compared to Stat Counter, the latter is lower. Of course, that could have something to do with how a unique visitor is counted, and I must confess I haven't looked it how our visitors are counted beyond ZenTiger telling me a while back that he'd changed it.
The weird thing also is that the Technorati authority for our blog is currently sitting at 54, which is reasonable. And when I look at the higher volume blogs (ie those with a large number of commenters) that have a higher authority than us, that makes sense. What doesn't totally make sense are those in the top 20 whose authorities are quite low.
It also looks to me that if I sat here churning out post after post, that I could actually artificially inflate our rankings. However, doing that would drastically change the nature of our blog, as posts that people might be commenting on would get pushed down and therefore almost forgotten. One to four blog posts a day is probably the most we would want to do on that basis.
So, I'm curious as to how people think the blogosphere ought to be ranked, if the formula used is a good one or if there is some better indicator?
Related Link: NZ Blogosphere Rankings May 2008 ~ NZ Blogosphere
I don't understand Alexa rankings either.
ReplyDeleteI just find it strange that No Minister sems to do well on Alexa, making me think we are doing something wrong like not linking to many other sites in our blogroll.
Then I was advised that would make little difference.
As for posting numbers, yes you have been missed Lucyna.
And there is a balance between the number of posts and what is right.
I am beginning to wonder if having a minimum of ten posts a day might be a little too much.
Either in terms of what people can absorb and comment freely on, especially if we have something contentious to debate, and potential impacts on quality of the posts.
It is easy to take a story from the Herald and bang a few comments next to it, as opposed to a largely original piece on whatever it might be.
What kind of blogs do we want to be?
FFM,
ReplyDeleteThanks!
In general, I think it's best with blogging to do what you want - rather than what you think your readers want. You have less chance of burning out that way, and blogging will be far more satisfying. When it comes down to it, we all do this for free, anyway. It's better to get readers who read what you want to write rather than trying to get those readers that you don't enjoy writing for.
My 2cents:
ReplyDeleteWe blog for different reasons, I guess--and the number of readers/commenters isn't necessarily important.
Neither are rankings based on those.
At CR we enjoy collecting articles and news items and posting them for people to browse, comment on if they feel like it or ignore if they don't.
In other words, we post pretty much for ourselves, not as part of some popularity/relevance contest.
The moment the sheer number of readers becomes important, we would be posting in response to the demands of our (miniscule anyway) readership. And that's not freedom to post whatever we feel like, is it?