Blog Rankings

I don't know how to make heads or tails out of the blog rankings. According to the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem, I'm the 482nd most read blog with just over 700 hits per day. But according to their link rankings, I'm #2055 with 74 inbound unique links. But according to Technorati up until the last few days, I had over 150 inbound unique links. Then Technorati suddenly changed to say I had 80 inbound links from one source - obviously false. And now it says I have 20 inbound links from one source - even more obviously false. So it seems to me that if the inbound links were being counted correctly, this blog would be ranked a lot higher than 2055 by that measurement. But both Technorati and the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem seem to change numbers almost randomly, so who knows.

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Blogshares similarly miscounts ingoing and outgoing links. One big shrug of the shoulders--in terms of quality content, your blog is far better than hyper-linkers like instapundit. Popularity has its problems.

Yeah, too often I look at those top-ranked blogs and wonder why anyone reads them at all...and of the decent ones, they rarely have much to add compared to what the little guys say. More distributed linkage!

I agree that the link counting is messed up. Down at my end of the TTLB ecosystem, a dozen links can move you up or down the food chain - and it happens at random overnight.

I'm also amazed that my just-under 400 hit average translates to the top 1000 on TTLB traffic rankings. The blog world must be VERY centralized.

"Blog rankings"? Of what relevance are blog ranking statistics?

You are linked to by some amazingly intelligent people. Surely that serves for something. And it isn't as though you are making money off this blog.

You are a breath of fresh air in comparison to, for example, LittleGreenGoofballs. I don't agree with you all the time, but I do find your comments and those of the commenters quite refreshing. Keep it up.

I totally agree with raj here. Blog rankings are beginning to sound like neilson ratings, used to determine the prime locations for BlogAds. Does it matter?? Well if it did, in the WWW blogsphere some of the most popular blogs are some of the most hideous. Rockstars/bands and actors, lame TV pundits, professional athletes et al are inveterate bloggers these days world wide. Are their discourses matters of substance and import?? No, but they make good copy for other media to use to sell their products.

Keep up the amazing efforts you are making here to sustain the intellectual quality of the discussions of powerful and important issues.

Maybe you'd increase your ranking if you ran for pope.

Ed for pope!