THE 50 MOST POPULAR SALON BLOGS, BY INBOUND LINKS

Posted on May 6, 2003 by Dave Pollard
salon These rankings are based on number of inbound blogs per Technorati . ‘Inbound blogs’ are those that have either blogrolled you or mentioned you with a link in a recent (not yet archived) post. The number of inbound blogs is shown after the blog name. This list tells a quite different story of blog popularity from the Monthly Top 50 list (below), as it filters out the effect of one-time search engine hits, spikes and self-initiated hits. As with the Monthly Top 50 list, (a) the name and location of each blog’s ‘owner’, when known, is shown below the blog name, (b) the Salon blog number links to the blog’s home page, and (c) I’ll fix any errors or omissions you tell me about promptly.

 1. the reverse cowgirl’s blog 280
Susannah Breslin 1437 		26. Stuff from Wozz 13
Matt Cable 1019 Colorado
 2. Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comment 143
Scott Rosenberg 0014 California 		27. Le Prêtre Noir 13
Father Bojangles 1823
 3.  Real Live Preacher 109
Anonymous 1772 		28. Pesky the Rat 12
Susan McNerney 1293 California
 4.  Radio Free Blogistan 102
Christian Crumlish 1111 California 		29. neva, miss feva, blogging 12
Neva Cavataio 1216 Oregon
5. How to Save the World 56
Dave Pollard 2007 Ontario 		30. Emphasis Added 12
Rob Salkowitz 1454
 6.  The Julie/Julia Project 51
Julie Powell 1399 New York 		31. The Barbaric Yawp 12
Christopher Key 1811 Washington
 7. The Raven 46
Anonymous 1381 Florida 		32. Fiona 12
Anonymous  1705
8. Secular Blasphemy 40
Jan Haugland 1561 Norge 		33. Playing with my food… 11
Paul Hinrichs 1444 North Carolina
 9.  different strings 38
Kriselda Jarnsaxa 1542 Kansas 		34. Everything That Sucks 11
Amanda 1691 Florida no more
10.  The Devil’s Excrement 32
Miguel Octavio 1330 Venezuela 		35. Life on Earth 11
Giles Boutel 1237
11.  Rayne Today 30
Anonymous 1549 Michigan 		36. Gnosis 11
Morgan Sandquist 1081 New York
12.  Second p0st 29
Phillip Pearson 0002 New Zealand 		37. WIFLblog 9
Ted Ritzer 1455 British Columbia
13.  Toby’s Political Diary 27
Toby Sackton 1282 Massachusetts 		38. readme.blog 8
Chris 1075 New York
14.  The Agora 25
Douglas Anders 1147 Ohio 		39. Maxine ‘s Radio Weblog 8
Maxine Locker 1314
15.  Fried Green al-Qaedas 25
Mark Hoback 1424 		40. A blog doesn’t need a clever name 7
Bruce Umbaugh 1004 Missouri
16.  She’s Actual Size 22
Kat Donohue 1068 California 		41. Reflections 7
Daniel Dolinov 1476 New York
17.  filchyboy chronotope 21
Christopher Filkins 1512 		42. Tales of Drudgery and Boredom 6
Michel Vuijlsteke 1236 Belgie
18. David Harris’ Science and Literature 21
David Harris 1092 Maryland 		43. FarrFeed 5
John Farr 1107 New Mexico
19.  My so called lesbian life 18
Penny 1883 Florida 		44. The Monster Limo Weblog 5
Marc Hatfield 1956 New York
20.  No Code 17
David Fox 1196 Ohio 		45. Subdued Citizen   5
Anonymous 1968
21.  Why Your Wife Won’t Have Sex With You 15
Julia Deckham Grey 2153 		46. Blog Baby 4
Marie Foster 2237 Washington
22.  explodedlibrary.info 15
Morgan Wilson 1429 Minnesota 		47. Global Suburb   3
Adrian Zoot 1879 Maryland
23.  Driver 8 13
Charly Z 1118 		48. Hyperbole 3
Jim Haefele 1703 Tunisia
24.  Struggle in a Bungalow Kitchen 13
LL Adams 1754 New York 		49 Pipeline 3
Doug Hennessee 1739 Minnesota
25.  STANDING ROOM ONLY 13
Hugh Elliott 1573 California 		50. Sexy Mothers Do Exist 3
Michelle McBride 1917

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17 Responses to THE 50 MOST POPULAR SALON BLOGS, BY INBOUND LINKS

  1. David Sifry says:
    May 6, 2003 at 10:07

    Dave,Drop me a line at david at sifry dot com – I can help you to automate your rankings by giving you access to some of the Technorati data…Dave

  2. Dave Pollard says:
    May 6, 2003 at 10:36

    Will do, David. I’m particularly intrigued about the idea of showing the Salon Blog community, and the links within and without, graphically. It would take a fairly sophisticated algorithm to do this in a ‘drill-down’ fashion to avoid the graphic being so busy as to be unusable.

  3. Marie Foster says:
    May 6, 2003 at 13:42

    I have wondered daily how filchy boy ends up with so many hits since his blog has not been updated for weeks. Then I thought… no it is petty to think that the hits come from some kind of bot.I wish that we could get the number of unique ips hitting our sites. That would be a truer measure I think.

  4. Marie Foster says:
    May 6, 2003 at 14:40

    opps… I just found I was wrong about filchy boy being updated. Me bad… full retraction of above post.

  5. Dave Pollard says:
    May 6, 2003 at 16:02

    Marie: There are a very few people who ‘cheat’ and repeatedly hit their own blogs, but the ever-helpful and prolific Christopher F. isn’t one of them. You can tell easily by looking at the referrer logs who does this. If you look at the differences between the two lists, the following patterns emerge:1. Those that rank high on hits but low on incoming links, are getting a lot of Google hits, usually because of the subject matter of their blogs [usually sex]. That doesn’t mean they don’t deserve the hits: The top-rated R-rated Salon Blogs are highly entertaining as well as titillating. Pornographer’s Picks shows this: compare its high ‘hits’ ranking with its low ‘incoming links’ ranking and you can see what happens when quality isn’t there.2. In some cases, like yours, high hits but low incoming links indicate either a refreshing new blogger (not yet discovered outside the community) or unusual spikes due to a mass of referrals from one or two very popular blogs.3. Those that rank high on incoming links but low on hits usually have a small, seasoned and faithful readership. They’re often ‘specialized’ posters on technology subjects, arts or science.So I think if you look at the two tables together and take an average ranking you have a fair (if imperfect) picture of popularity. See the next post above for one well-established blogger’s ideas how to improve your blog’s popularity.

  6. Dave Pollard says:
    May 6, 2003 at 16:13

    Just to clarify my comment above re: Pornographer’s Picks: it’s a blog with outdated yet salacious content (so it gets lots of Google hits, but no incoming links). My clumsy wording above implied it was exemplary. Need more coffee.

  7. Rayne says:
    May 6, 2003 at 18:26

    I’d like to point out that the age of one’s blog also makes a difference, if the content is compelling; filchyboy’s been at this since 1997 (feel free to correct me, Christopher, if you’re reading this). It may also appear that some inbound traffic is Google hits — but I think some folks don’t know enough to add a favorite (I’ve had someone coming to my site several times a week Googling me with “chick trick”. I’ve been number one for that search. Go figure.)

  8. The Raven says:
    May 6, 2003 at 18:42

    Seems that the filchster put some code into his salonblog to ferry hits from Weblogs.com over to Salonblogs.com. Which is his right, of course. Nobody’s been able to figure out why he needs 2 blogs of the same name, and not just a subcategory; but he’s explained in the past that he’s engaged in research, or something of that nature, and we wouldn’t understand. The important thing here concerns Shirky’s power law, which appears to describe the phenomena we observe on a daily basis. Incoming and outgoing links are, from my perspective, meaningless. If you want hits, forget Google, you need the blessing of a KingMaker. Get a cite from Reynolds or Sullivan, you’ll get 300 to 500 thousand hits in one day. Those people will evaluate you and if you’ve got the quality, you’ll move up the curve exponentially. – R.

  9. Rayne says:
    May 6, 2003 at 20:25

    Dave — maybe you’ll find this of interest:http://www.corante.com/many/20030501.shtml#32607

  10. Charly Z says:
    May 6, 2003 at 20:44

    About those weblogs.com hits for fichlyboy, Raven, when we update our blogs they not only get listed here at Salon blogs, but also at weblogs.com; don’t finger the man as a sly hit-generator just because he’s so popular.

  11. Dave Pollard says:
    May 6, 2003 at 21:02

    Thanks, Rayne: Boy, Mr. Shirky really gets around. Problem with all the graphic representations of social networks I’ve seen, is they’re beautiful but unintelligible (sp?). Raven: Tend to agree we need a few 100k hits/day stars in the Slogosphere to get some respect and serious traffic through here (Agonist averaged 2M hits/day during the war). But don’t agree that incoming links are ‘meaningless’: they sure mean something to the recipient, at least until they become overwhelming. They’re the equivalent of ‘paid circulation’ to a magazine, where hits are just eyeballs, mainly looking for something else but stopping for a peek at the centrefold.

  12. The Raven says:
    May 6, 2003 at 23:15

    Charly: Andrew brought it up way back. Remember? Filchy explained his methodology at that time. R.

  13. Charly Z says:
    May 7, 2003 at 11:33

    Yes, Raven, I do remember. So I stand corrected. Let me then just repeat the thought that triggered my impulsive comment: “When we update our blogs they not only get listed here at Salon blogs, but also at weblogs.com.” Even I get some hits from weblogs.com, only very few.

  14. Dave Pollard says:
    May 7, 2003 at 13:46

    Oh, what a tangled web we weave. I wonder if we could get Salon to change the ‘since inception’ referrer list to show all the referrers since inception instead of just today’s referrers. In the first case this makes more sense. In the second place it would let us produce an ‘adjusted’ hits list & ranking that excludes self-hits and ‘dishonest’ hits like this. Or we could simply have Salon disqualify and exclude from the rankings list blogs that use these dishonest tricks. Or we could come up with some modified popularity index using a combination of hits and incoming links. Or we could give up on the entire &*#^% exercise, and concentrate on getting more people to visit our community, period, which would make us all so popular we wouldn’t care about cheating any more.

  15. Dave Pollard says:
    May 7, 2003 at 15:18

    Wouldn’t you know it — I’ve received a couple of hundred extra hits today that appear in the referrer list to be self-initiated from my Business category. In reality, they’re thanks to David Gurteen’s immensely popular Knowledge Letter e-newsletter for KM professionals, which recommends my Business category as a K-Log (knowledge management weblog). And since KM people are a naturally curious lot, a lot of them took a peek at my home page as well. So even if Salon were to delete self-referential hits from its stats, it still might not give an accurate picture of popularity. *sigh* Meantime, I guess I’d better do a new Business post to keep the new viewers interested. Any Gurteen newsletter fans reading this, welcome, and thanks, David!

  16. Martin Wisse says:
    May 7, 2003 at 23:40

    Michel Vuijlsteke (note spelling) is actually Belgian, not Dutch.

  17. Dave Pollard says:
    May 8, 2003 at 13:19

    Fixed. Thanks, Martin.

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