Ranking Canada’s “Top” 25 Political Blogs
January 6, 2009
After reading Werner Patel’s ridicule of Robert Jago’s,’Canada’s Top 25 Political Blogs’, I had to chuckle.
Werner writes…
Following Robert Jago’s joke list of top political blogs (he pre-selects his favourite blogs and then ranks them based on dubious criteria)
If I used Jago’s approach, Small Dead Animals or Ezra Levant wouldn’t show on any of my lists. After all, quantity (site traffic) does not equal quality, and since neither of these two blogs have any discernible quality, you won’t find them on my blogroll,…
He than states…
The lesson to be drawn from this exercise is that there is no valid blog ranking out there. Unfortunately, there is no company that has developed a professional and reliable measuring methodology (e.g., as they do with newspapers’ circulation numbers, TV ratings, etc.).
Therefore, forget all those pseudo-rankings – they mean diddly-squat, all of them. You, the reader, must browse and choose the blogs you like. Once you have found them, bookmark them and enjoy their posts.
If Werner had just stopped there he would be basically correct,but he does not.Werner then goes on to produce two list(so called”real lists”),and surprise surprise his blog appears on both. This after he just finished stating that blog ranking is inconsistent and meaningless.
Still, if one had to choose, the objective rankings produced by search engines are definitely preferable to any selection a blogger makes based on his own ideas.
Making it’s quite obvious that the point Werner is really trying to make, is that if his blog is not on the list,then that list must be flawed or a “joke”.
Werner generates his first list using Technorati ,the criteria used he does not say.The second list he generates using Google …
this ranking is 100% objective, based on something as simple as a Google search of “Canada + Political blogs” – i.e. no manual selection of blogs, as Jago does, and no other subjective weighting or ranking on the author’s part (aggregators have been excluded from search results, as have any search results that clearly do not deal with politics as their main topic):
Are we to believe that Werner’s blog makes both lists,17th and 15th,while SDA,yuk,a blog that receives upwards of 10,000 hits daily appears on neither ? Are we to believe that Werner’s blog out ranks Calgary Grit,Inkless Wells,Canadian Cynic,or Dawg’s etc etc ?….of course not.
Anyway out of curiosity I did a list of my own, based simply on the number of incoming links that a particular blog receives.For sure it is not definitive,but it is definitly more relevant than Werner’s lists.In fact the list that Werner condemns, Jargo’s , lists many of the same blogs as my list.
All arguments aside,in the end its traffic that counts.
The more popular a blog the more hits and links that blog will receive.A premise that could be easily proven if bloggers made their site metrics(i.e Google Analytic’s,Sitemeter etc) public.There’s your way out Werner,as they say,”the proof is in the pudding”.
Anyway without further interruption,“Canada’s Top 25 political blogs”, as per number of incoming links…
1.The Oil Drum 8,740 12,000-13,000 hits/visits per day
2.The Reaction 6,010
3.DeSmog Blog , Steyn On-line both with 5,150
4.Colby Cosh 4,960
5.SDA 4,940 8,000-10,000 hit/visits per day
6.Micheal Geist 4,220
7.Damnation 3,700
8.Five Feet of Fury 3,420
9.Shotgun Blog 3,310
10.Steve Janke 2,820
11.Ghost of a Flea 2,530
12.Ezera Levant 2,500
13.POGGE 2,410
14.Dust My Broom 2,230
15.Galloping Beaver 2,060
16. No-Libs 2040 , Warren Kinsella 1,930
17.Vanity Press 1,800
18.BeneDiction 1,620
19.Inkless Wells 1,510
20.Calgary Grit 1,490
21.Kamangir 1,440
22.Miss 604 , James Bow both with 1,410
23.Jordan Cooper 1,380
24.Canadian Cynic 1,360
25.Dr Dawg , Cathie from Canada , Bastard Logic all with 1,330
followed by Stage Left -1,180 Matthew Good -1,170 Abandoned Stuff -1,150 Liberal Catnip -1,130 Antonia Zerbisias -946
and way,way,wayyyyy down [tied with me ouch] we find Werner Patel – 250
For those interested in blog metrics/ranking,everything you could possibly need to know can be found & discussed here
