The search & search marketing fields have, over the last 4 years, become overrun with bloggers. It would seem that many of us have been drinking our own Kool-Aid and hopping on the blog bandwagon. Lately, more and more folks have been asking for my take on this trend - what do I read? How often do I visit? Who do I respect?

In a controversial move, rather than simply creating a blogroll, I'm trying out a structured approach to ranking the search field's blogs, assigning labels and ratings based solely on my own feelings. Obviously, these are personal judgements, so make no assumptions other than "that's what Rand thinks..."

  • I've tried my best to rank both the categories and the blogs inside by relative level of importance
  • Only English language search blogs were considered
  • Additional, non-search industry blogs are listed at the bottom
  • I've almost surely forgotten some important ones
  • The rankings are from the perspective of a search marketer (and one who's heavily into the organic side), rather than an ad guru, someone at a search engine or simply a search technology enthusiast
  • It's hard, even for me, to read all of these each day, but I really do try
  • I've left SEOmoz off the list - you can decide for yourself if/where you'd rank it

The Mainstays
These are the blogs that everyone in search reads on a daily basis. It's hard to call yourself a search marketer (or a search industry participant) unless you can express an opinion and speak intelligently on the topics these guys are covering.

The Elite
Not everyone in the industry reads them, but most of us have them in our RSS feeds or on the favorites list. They often get lots of comments, bring up unique subject matter and have personalities and personal reporting styles that makes their material engaging.

The Niche Bloggers
Some of my favorite folks fit into this description, and though many of them post infrequently and some are more personal than search-focused, they're often the kinds of writers who have a very high ratio of links to posts.

Outsiders
Many of these are very important sites from other sectors of the technology, marketing or webdev fields, and lots of search folks are paying attention. Some of these are actually more influential than any blog in the search space.

Errors and omissions time - let me know what you think about who should be listed, who's more influential, and who's in the wrong category altogether.

UPDATE: I made a couple changes and added ShoeMoney (because excluding him was an awful mistake). I also want to note that Barry Schwartz made his own list over here, and he's got 76 blogs, ranked in order...