Blog Rankings

Blogs are ranked by several metrics. The primary ones are the number of inbound links and the number of feed subscribers within a time period. From these rankings come many lists – usually “Top 100″ lists. These lists are controversial for several reasons. Firstly, the rich get richer–that is, those with high traffic get more traffic as a result and the lists are relatively stable and exclusionary. Also, there is some debate over the appropriateness of inbound links and feed subscriptions as measures of value.

The ranking of blogs is typically done through an algorithm. When a person or group does this it is called a blog itself. Many blogs via blogrolls or postings create their own rankings, and search (google or otherwise) is nearly ubiquitous. Add to that the growing prominence of tagging and persistent search and this makes the likelihood of any individual reader relying solely on a particular “top” list pretty small, although there is no data I am aware of on this subject.

It’s not surprising that there is no single way to determine ‘the best’ blogs, and any attempt to sort the mass of blogs will be threatened by SPAM and the preconceptions of the rank creators. Alternative metrics do need to be developed – the more the merrier, but what will be more informative is studying how real people find the blogs they read.

This post inspired by reading this post from Napsterization via this post from Many-to-Many.