Popularity: How do You measure it?
Published August 13, 2006
I haven't been very active in the Indian blogosphere and so missed the entire discussion over Kiruba being the No. 1 blogger in India (according to Blogstreet). Patrix has expressed his opinion on popularity in the Indian blogosphere. He goes on to list several Indian blogs (including mine) according to their Technorati Ranking. His post did get me thinking.
Popularity can be defined as the quality of being widely admired or accepted or sought after. But, how does this translate in the world-wide web? How do we measure popularity? What are the various methods today? Are they reliable?
Technorati
Today, a lot of methods exist for measuring popularity. One, like Patrix pointed out is, to use Technorati's Ranking.
Technorati ranks blogs based on the number of incoming links. This rank is updated several times a day and only considers active links from the past six months. As of today, Technorati tracks around 50.9 million blogs!
A point to note is that the incoming links don't just belong to posts or blogrolls, but also from credit lines (e.g. like that of my Connections Reloaded Theme).
Alexa
Another method of gauging popularity is Alexa Traffic Rank.
Alexa's ranking system has been online from as far as i can remember! Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users. They have a page detailing the process. This is a stark difference from that of Technorati. Having a higher traffic rank is a more accurate sign of your site's popularity because it measures the number of users actually visiting your site. However, Alexa ranks can be slightly inaccurate because it depends on users of their toolbar.
Topsites
Top Sites are often used to compare the popularity of blogs with one another. There are way too many top sites run by way too many people. A few well known ones are Blog Top Sites, Top100 Bloggers, RankingBlogs.com and Indian Bloggers.
- Popularity: How do You measure it?
- Published: August 13, 2006
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Blogging, Sci/Tech: Computers, Sci/Tech: Internet
- Writer: Ajay
- Ajay's BC Writer page
- Ajay's personal site
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Comments on this articleComments
I hope not by me, Jet. I'm in no position whatsoever to chastise. I am but a mere slug, and happily so, I might add.
Very true about how you put it Snarkattack. Personal appreciation does help a lot in satisfying our ego at times :)
Ajay,
I came across your article here via Google Alerts.
Personally, I don't blog. Most anyone I know doesn't blog. Haven't found much use for blogs, today. The 2005 Blog Awards showcased a few blogs of which most were fairly useless. I think one young lady blogged about her wart on her thumb.
I guess you guys think that that's measurement of popularity? Warts? She won an award!
In the history of blogging, I'd say the MOST POPULAR and MOST FAMOUS is Leonardo da Vinci. He blogged some 5,000 journals (that we know of). Allowed comments on them and never once permitted spam (does yours?).
I can understand keeping a journal such as Leonardo's. It's useful. You can read a virtual copy of one of them on the British Library's web site. It's cool. It's flash. It's interactive.
It's an excellent contribution. His works have been savored for centuries. Very popular!
I believe that there are some 80 million blogs (and growing) today. None of them are popular in my world regardless of any of the means of measurement that you mentioned in your article.
I don't think any one of these 80 million will last forever as Leonardo's will. I don't think any one of them will hit the UK Library of fine literary journal (blog) content as is Leonardo's, Michaelangelo's and several others.
Therefore, one VALID means of measurement (of popularity) amongst the blogging community is having your blog accepted and archived by the British Library of Fine Literary Journals.
Kind regards,
Al Toman
This is some of the points I wanted to raise Al Toman.
Like I said, no scale to date has been able to judge popularity of any blog.
As you mentioned, most people do not agree with the so called Blog Awards, just as many don't agree with the Oscars.
And one point I agree with, if persons like Leonardo or Aristotle for that matter blog, all our blogs would pale in comparison :)
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/51484)
I'd like to say that I don't care how popular my blog is, but that wouldn't be honest at all.
I think it might be more accurate, however, to say that those whose opinions I value - if they read and mention it to me in personal correspondence - that means a lot to me.
That isn't to say that I expect everyone I know to read what I write just because they know me, but it sure does brightens one's day when someone you consider to be intelligent tells you that your post on X was well-written, entertaining or generally enjoyable.
Probably a very long-winded way of saying that personal satisfaction is more important to me than popularity as defined by the amount of traffic one gets.