For this study, hundreds of genealogy blogs were evaluated based on their overall content, Technorati rating, and industry experience. Due to the ever-changing nature of the blogosphere and the authority basis of Technorati rankings, it is anticipated that this list will change frequently.Technorati's authority ratings are based on how many unique blogs link to your blog over a 6 month period (180 days). TransylvanianDutch, for example, currently has an 'authority rating' of 33, which means in the past 180 days 33 different blogs linked to ours. It's possible each of those 33 linked 1000 times. (Unlikely, but possible.) Technorati doesn't care. Technorati also doesn't measure hits, so it has no idea how popular you are among non-bloggers.
I am honored to be able to say TransylvanianDutch is in the Top 25. #15 to be exact. I was curious how much of the ranking was Technorati, and how much was ProGenealogists' subjective judgment of 'overall content' and 'industry experience'.
So I looked up the Technorati Authority Ranking for 25 of the top 26 blogs. (As ProGenealogist indicates, for some reason, Eastman's Online Newsletter isn't considered a blog. They say they found the data elsewhere, though I don't know where that is.) I should also note that this is as of April 6th. ProGenealogists' ranking was as of April 3rd. It's possible the Authority ratings for some of the sites below could have changed in 3 days.
1. About.com Genealogy (108)
2. Eastman Online Newsletter (?)
3. Genea-Musings (92)
4. Creative Gene (76)
5. Dear Myrtle (71)
6. AnceStories (69)
7. Genealogue (69)
8. footnoteMaven (57)
9. Genetic Genealogist (53)
10. Tracing The Tribe: Jewish Genealogy Blog (43)
11. GenaBlogie (39)
12. Olive Tree Genealogy Blog (37)
13. Steve’s Genealogy Blog (37)
14. 24-7 Family History Circle (30)
15. TransylvanianDutch (33)
16. GenDisasters (31)
17. Genealogy Insider @ FamilyTree (29)
18. Think Genealogy (28)
19. California Genealogical Society and Library Blog (28)
20. The Genealogy Guys (27)
21. CanadaGenealogy, or, 'Jane's Your Aunt' (24)
22. Ancestry Insider (21)
23. GenealogyBlog (22)
24. Ancestor Search Blog (18)
25. Tie Hugh Watkins Genealogue (12)
25. Legacy News (12)
So, basically the list matches Technorati's ranking, except in two cases where a blog with a lower ranking was moved higher on the list. Ancestry.com's 24/7 Family History Circle was placed above GenDisasters and TransylvanianDutch. And AncestryInsider was placed above GenealogyBlog. I won't argue with either decision.
Knowing what the numbers are should give those who are a little competitive an idea of how close they are to those above in the list, and who is breathing down their necks.
Note: As has been pointed out in the comments, while the order of the 25 closely matches Technorati's rankings, ProGenealogists did use some further subjectivity in selecting which blogs to include, as there are several genealogy blogs that are absent from the list with sufficient 'authority' to be included.
Posts
7 comments:
I was surprised to see that Creative Gene's "authority" on Technorati had fallen to 76. The last time I looked, probably back in October, it was still over 100. I guess that's what happens when you cut back on blogging like I did :-(
Thanks for the analysis, John, and congrats on making the list!
Interesting analysis, John. Do you find Technorati to be very accurate? They seem to have all of my recent posts but in the past noticed that lots slipped by their "ping" system.
Congrats on making the list, John. Very interesting. My rating is a 33 also. Perhaps I'm not a genealogy blog after all!
Congratulations John!
I really don't think they relied too heavily on the Technorati "authority" since there are quite a few other genea-blogs that have a higher "authority" than many of those in the lower half of their list.
I think it was a lot more subjective than they are letting on. But that's okay since I agree with many of their choices ;-)
I do question one of their selections though - a blog that has had only one post thus far this year...
Congratulations, John!
Congratulations, John. I never looked at Technorati. So today I did. Shades of the Departed beat footnoteMaven, but didn't make the list.
I don't care how they did it, I'm just pleased.
-fM
Thanks for explaining this, John. Your blog deserves to be on the list whatever the criteria!
Post a Comment