Let's say I wanted to compare the relative levels of inluence of two bloggers in the same field. Although no method other than direct access to their visitor stats is going to be entirely accurate, there are several pieces of data that can provide a clue as to how "far and wide" a blogger's readership extends:
- Alexa data - though inaccurate, unless it's being spoofed, it will show relative levels of traffic in the same sector with some degree of accuracy.
- Bloglines subscribers - not everyone's demographics is hooked on Bloglines, but again, when comparing apples and apples, it's good data.
- Del.icio.us bookmarks - blogs get bookmarked quite a bit, though sometimes a single post or two might have more taggers than the blog as a whole. For the purposes of measuring influence, it's best to just analyze the blog homepage numbers.
- Technorati's link count data - inside the blogosphere, it's actually fairly good, though skewing definitely occurs in some sectors and much of the blogosphere-external links and readership goes unobserved.
- Yahoo!'s link count - a fairly good way to see how many links total the blog has to it (note - scroll too the last page of Yahoo!'s displayed results for more accurate link number data)
Using these, we might come up with a sample table for relative levels of influence in the SEO sphere... I'll ask someone here at SEOmoz to do the research and try to have it posted tomorrow afternoon - just leave comments with which blogs you'd like us to compare. My initial thoughts are:
- Mike Grehan (and possibly his ClickZ column, too)
- Threadwatch
- SEOBook
- Matt Cutts
- SearchEngineWatch
- SERoundtable
- Philipp Lenssen (GG Blogoscoped)
- V7N Blog
Let me know who else you'd like to see compared. Maybe we can put together a good weighting formula and crown a "biggest influencer" in SEO title... which gets me thinking - we could take bets on who we think will take it. From the list so far, I'd probably go with Matt or possibly Blogoscoped.
Rand, you're going to want to slap me today, and I apologize in advance. I was just wondering how accurate the numbers are. For ex. I don't use Alexa, Bloglines has public and private stats, I ignore the others unless I'm following links from somewhere else, even though I'm a member of them all. I visit most SEO blogs from my own blog links page because its easier to scroll down my list. Meaning, if you go by data, my data may or may not count? Not that I matter of course, but I can't be the only impossible person on the 'Net that doesn't fit a norm. I'm with Andy Beal. Incoming traffic as a baseline doesn't indicate industry influence. Right now, my blog is getting incoming links from Neil Young fans :)
Yeah - I just read that Neil Young entry - great stuff Kim. This killed me:
I would say that in absolute terms, none of the data is particularly accurate, but in relative terms, it may carry some value. That's what this whole thing is about - trying to see if there is any value. If we use it on a sector we're all very familar with, we can compare the numbers with our thoughts (and any accurate stats folks have made public) and have an idea of the value for the future...
Ah yes..."value for the future". My mind is going in directions that have nothing to do with this topic... On what numbers tell us, I appreciate what you all are trying to do. I do recall the thread at Cre8 on "women and the web" and how I complained that what they said about what is "normal" for where women go on the web didn't fit me at all. It's clear they didn't survey me. So, I didn't relate or see myself in their conclusions. I can't help but wish there was a more accurate and representative way to get to your conclusions, if such a thing even exists. Maybe the real influences are outside the sacred circle?
Does anyone read Search Engine Journal?
I do... They're also one of the only SEO blogs that feeds direct to Google/Yahoo! news, so they get a lot of attention from there. Bloglines shows them as having 451 subscribers ;)
Thanks Rand.
Yes Joe Banner, about 7,000 people read Search Engine Journal every day.
It's not as niche targeted as some of these awesome SEO blogs like Rand's or Aaron's, but we try :)
Eh - it's as good as you'll get in "general terms" so go for it. I see influence more as how many people are *listening* than how many people are reading.
For instance, I know a girl with a newsletter subscriber base of 4000 people and she charges more than those with double the subscribers - because her "open rate" blows them out of the water. The competitors may have more subscribers, but her subscribers are actually listening - and taking her recommendations.
I think it's the same thing with blogs. I have several on my radar that I occassionally read that often gets "scoops" and I have those I read faithfully. You're not going to get it "perfect" - but it sounds like you want to run a general test, so I'd think your setup is a good one for a general "study". Good luck. ;-)
I think that each individual needs to decide which blog is "right" for him or her - at any given point in their growth and at any state of mind. I am certain that it changes.
I believe Brandon (our newest employee - I'll be introducing him formally very soon) has just about wrapped up the data gathering on this. I'm in SF this until Thursday, but should be publishing results Friday or Monday, depending...
Maybe sooner if I have some free time here.
I learned a ton just from the comments here.
Rand, when can we see the results?
Also, are you calculating all the feeds? I know I have several feeds (short rss 1.0 and rss 2.0 and a full feed...
This has too much of a People magazine "Most Beautiful People" theme to it. These contests don't take into consideration cross industry blogs, nor do they differentiate between solo acts and team blogs, the latter of which of course is going to outpace the solo unless the solo has no life other than blogging, or works for Google.
I was shocked to learn my blog was linked to by someone from another industry because he said I was, in his opinion, the most "honest SEO' of them all. That I retired from SEO in 2002 didn't seem to matter.
For these "Who is the best SEO Blog" ratings, anyone in a supporting role/related industry/related category like SEO Humor, don't get counted. In my opinion, they matter because people outside the industry read these blogs and are making judgements on the SEO industry in doing so.
All that aside, what makes a blog popular and beautiful? Going by numbers only doesn't impress me much. There are other factors, for me anyway, that I look for in blogs. I would start this thing by asking the voters what matters to them, first.
I question why these competitions matter for anything other than more link love and an ego-high. How is it a true gauge, asking people within an industy to vote for their own, peer against peer? There are SEO's and companies that I've never heard of near where I live that have no blogs, but are speaking at local events and educating the communities and businesses on the value of SEO. Discovering they exist at all dumped me right out of my big fat castle.
Kim - there's bo competition here, it's just an experiment to see if the data matches our own opinions about the relative levels of readership, etc.
This is by no means a contest or a "most such-and-such" like the SEJournal competition. We're just going out to see how good the external data is.
Alexholic is a pretty nice tool for comparing Alexa data.
My money is on Shoemoney for having the most popular SEO blog, with Matt Cutts closely following.
Actually, I'm not a fan of contests that pit me against my friends in the industry (I'd rather stay out of it). But I agree that Danny would probably come out on top.
Andy - for the sake of keeping it objective, I'd rather just use the raw numbers. And, as for pitting people against one another, I really don't think that's the idea - it's moer of a "can we use this to accurately measure realtive levels of traffic/influence in a sector?" type of thing.
I think you may need to better define "relative levels of inluence". You've only listed ways to identify levels of blog traffic (even listing inbound links doesn't measure influence). What about a blogger that can spread the message to mainstream media? A blogger that often gets quoted in MSM is more of an influencer in my opinion.
Then that would be a nice race between Danny, Randy, and Andy :)
And once the influence of SEO blogs are measured, you can always expand to other niche blog groupings :)
Again, I think your test can give a good measure of traffic relative to others on the scale, but I just don't see how you can translate that to "influence". If 100 links to a blog also carry the sentiment that the guy is a jerk and doesn't know sh!t, then the blogger is not really an influencer.
Not trying to be difficult, it's your test so you set the rules for it. I'm really just voicing something that we look at everyday as part of our reputation monitoring service. It's tough to measure a blogger's influence by simply looking at traffic and links.
Agreed - very good points.
Yes, and if the Burrito Blog enters the picture (https://www.burritoblog.com/ I don't think anyone can even hope to compare with its influence :)
Best on your project Rand, Loren
Good idea Rand on crowning the biggest influential SEO blogs. I would like to add that we may want to differentiate the SEO from SE blogs a bit. For instance, I would consider SEObook, Matt Cutts, V7N and SERoundtable SEO oriented blogs while Google Blogoscoped, SEW, and TW - I would file under general SE and SEM (along with Search Engine Journal, which is getting more SEO, but still a general Search Blog).
Mike Grehan's blog is more of a personal travel blog in my opinion by someone who is a talking head of the SEO industry. In comparison, I would not consider Bob Parson's blog to be a domain industry blog, although he is the CEO of GoDaddy.
Earlier in the year SEJ readers crowned Matt Cutts as the favorite SEO blog (excuse me for the link) : https://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?...
I'm hoping that the numbers behind your ranking system will show similarities to the opinions of the SEO industry :) That would be cool, especially since in the blogging world favorites lead to citations, which lead to more links and more influence.
Here is the original list of nominations from our 2005 Search Blog Awards: