Blog Traffic Reports and Rankings
comScore stirred up a hornet’s nest with its recent "Behaviors of the Blogosphere" report that attempts to quantify blog audiences. Jason Calacanis went on a rampage against the report, alleging it was biased since a rival blog network founder (Nick Denton) was a sponsor of the report.
But now Jason raves about the Feedster 500, a new blog ranking that seems more to his liking than the Technorati 100. The Feedster list is based on links to the blogs, but includes "subjective" analysis as well.
Then Robert Scoble enters the discussion by questioning whether links or feed subscribers is more relevant. After all, those who subscribe to your feed are effectively casting a vote for your content, whereas a link could simply be ridiculing you.
BL Ochman says simply "It’s hard to see the point of these lists." And she may be right.
The truth of the matter is that everyone needs to take these lists and reports for what they are: snapshots based on the assumptions and methods of their creators. There will never be a definitive list or report that makes everyone happy.
I say, the more lists and reports the merrier. It’s up to the reader to judge the value of each list for themselves, just as they do the content of every blog they encounter.
I personally prefer a list that is largely subjective: created by someone or an organization I respect and can relate to to see who they’re reading. From that perspective, blogrolls and similar lists often are more valuable to me than the most read blogs.
After all, magazines like Time and People get great circulation, but I find Red Herring, Inc., and MIT’s Technology Review much more illuminating.