Comments on: The Friendly Ghost PowerPR Index: The top 70 (or so) PR blogs

By: The Friendly Ghost

The Friendly Ghost — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:59:35 +0000

I love compiling lists. I’m probably deeply autistic but, critically, lack the self-awareness to see this. It’s probably a distinct drawback in a communications industry.

By: David Jones

David Jones — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:09:11 +0000

I love being on lists. This one at least doesn’t have my picture and isn’t likely to be hung in the post office.

By: The Friendly Ghost

The Friendly Ghost — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 15:54:07 +0000

OK, check out http://thefriendlyghost.wordpress.com/2007/06/10/the-friendly-ghost-powerpr-index-take-two/ – this might unruffle some feathers.

By: The Friendly Ghost

The Friendly Ghost — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 13:33:16 +0000

Thanks for the warning Scott.

In the interests of open, real-time, unedited dialogue, here’s the story so far. I’ve replicated the bloglines section – and there are some very strange discrepancies between what I see when I look at blogines subscriptions, and what the Power150 must see. There are quite a few sites that list very low subscription scores, and yet they score quite highly on the Power150. By ‘subscription rates’, I mean going to the site, clicking the Bloglines sub button, and counting up the subs on the feeds listed.

Because of this, I’m minded to remove the bloglines section altogether until I get clarification. When I do remove the bloglines scoring, the table starts to make more sense.
I’ve emailed the author to see if I can get insight into what’s going on.

I don’t think this is a problem because I’m still using Alexa, which could just substitite for the bloglines data.

I am currently looking into the Technorati rankings and hope to get this sorted soon. I’m still confident that this will account for any more discrepancies, simply because the Technorati figure on the Power150 is given more weight, with a value up to 30. I find this oddddddd, but I’m prepared to go with it for the sake of comparison.

The big question I guess is: should FG have verified all this before publishing? Well, I kind of did: I was able to rebuild the ‘top 25 bloggers about blogging’ table accurately, and this was what I took as my methodology. But it seems that on looking deeper into this to simulate the Power150, something strange is happening with bloglines, and that, for the purposes of comparison, I should be closer to the Power150 for Technorati scores.

So this is being worked on right now. I’m removing bloglines, revamping Technorati, but keeping Alexa.

So, keep your claws retracted PR people! I’m on the case.

By: scott baradell

scott baradell — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 12:58:46 +0000

Watch out, Ghost — when you start talking about rankings, PR people will get their claws out.

By: The Friendly Ghost

The Friendly Ghost — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 10:19:38 +0000

I also just noticed, Todd doesn’t use Alexa, which would also influence these results.

By: The Friendly Ghost

The Friendly Ghost — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 10:18:10 +0000

Amanda, I have double-checked the bloglines subscriptions for Strumpette. It seems you have two feeds – http://strumpette.com/feeds/index.rss2 and http://strumpette.com/feeds/atom.xml – and according to bloglines, neither of them have public subscribers, hence your figure here is zero. I’m more than happy to change this if I’m in error, but I’ll need you to direct me to the right figure. EDIT: I have just done this again using the bloglines ‘subscribe’ button and it is listing more feeds. Why bloglines is behaving differently this time, I do not know.
Regarding the divergence, I have just been through the PR sites on Todd’s list and whereas there is some correlation I do take your point that there are also differences. I think this comes about because Todd And applies different weights, with bloglines from 1 to 20, Technorati from 1 to 30, and the mysterious ‘Todd And’ factor that he throws in. I took the approach given by the Top 25 Blogs because I felt it was easier to quantify if each parameter was out of ten.
However, on reflection, I can see that it might make more sense to have directly comparable figures in this case, simply because there is overlap between the two lists. Whether or not I agree that bloglines and technorati should be given more weight, perhaps I should look into simulating Todd’s approach instead.
I guess this just shows the difficulty not just in defining influence, but in obtaining directly comparable figures even for popularity.
So, I’m going to look into this today. I’ll reconstruct the Todd And table just to make sure I’m following the same principles, and see how that affects the table (although I can’t add the ‘Todd And’ factor unfortunately).
Thanks,
FG

By: In the Same League…? « The Spud Gun

In the Same League…? « The Spud Gun — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 07:57:21 +0000

[...] June 10th, 2007 The Friendly Ghost has been compiling stats again! This time a ‘league table’ if you like of the top 70 or so PR bloggers. [...]

By: Spudgun

Spudgun — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 07:45:49 +0000

Can I Just point out, by way of mitigating circumstances, that the spud gun in, its current incarnation, is a mere two says old… but thanks (I think)for including us.

So we have “must try harder” on this terms report card.

By: Stephen Davies

Stephen Davies — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 23:59:48 +0000

Nice post. Way hey! I’m second out of the UK bloggers.

My Bloglines stats need bumping up too as my blog has three feeds (daft I know) – collectively my Bloglines subscribers are 235.

P.S I received a referral from this blog post but I can’t find the link to my blog from it? Weird.