Tillerman asked for suggestions for the Top Sailing Blogs. As he points out, there a lot of them now. As I waited for the turkey to cook on Thursday, I did a bit of analysis using Technorati. Technorati ranks blogs based on authority as determined by the number of blogs linking to them. It’s an odd measure but it suggests popularity. It is far from perfect.
I looked at blogs tagged Sailing and/or Sail. I double-checked against both my and Tillerman’s blogroll. (Some blogs, like mine, had multiple listings, so I took the highest ranking). Here is what I came up with.
Given that Technorati tracks and ranks 112.8 million blogs, getting anywhere on this list is impressive. I caveat the hell out of this and if I missed you, I apologize. Let me know and I will add you to the ranking. Note: You have to register your blog on Technorati to be found.
It is not surprising that 1000 Days at Sea made it to the top given all the press that this venture has received. God bless ’em, they deserve it.
I am delighted and also not surprised that Proper Course gets silver. Great posts, hard work, tenacity and a clear point-of-view count above all. Beating out an organization like Valencia Sailing and BMW Racing is not too shabby. Not bad when laser sailing beats out America’s Cup. Congrats Tillerman!
Blogs I would have expected to rank highly like Rule 69 and Livesaildie.com did not make the list as they aren’t registered on Technorati (Guys, you need get on there and claim your blog).
Tugster and Frogma rank highly and although they aren’t strictly sailing blogs, in my view, they deserve to make the list because a lot of sailors link to them and they do blog about sailing from time to time.
Authority ranking does not equal traffic ranking. For example Zephyr, who is ranked further down the list than I expected, always comes up high on sailing blog searches on Google. Google factors in traffic as well as linking among many other variables in deciding what to serve up.
It was also very surprising that Scuttleblog ended so far down the ranking.Their main site Scuttlebutt gets a lot of traffic and has a well-deserved loyal following. It maybe that most people link to the main site and not the blog.
So, authority is not perfect but maybe it is indicative of some kind of popularity. The only way we could sort this out definitively is to pool our traffic numbers to a neutral body for analysis. OK, now I am being a real nerd.
Hmmm. Interesting. The odd thing about Technorati is that when you ask it to find sailing blogs it also lists many blogs that have nothing to do with sailing including strangely enough many religious blogs. I guess this is because of the way you have to register your own blog for a category and, for reasons I can’t fathom, several of the christian bloggers have tagged their blogs on Technorati as sailing blogs. I have to resist the temptation to leave comments on those blogs asking them to leave the neigborhood.
I think you are right in saying that Technorati authority is based on number of incoming links. Of course number of daily visitors is quite a different factor, and then you have many peoplso e who read blogs via RSS feeds and email and never show up in measures of visits or links.
Thanks for the kinds words about Proper Course Adam. But it’s no surprise to me that Laser sailing is more popular than the America’s Cup.
Where did you get that info at technorati?
Proper Course has an authority of 74 and when I click on your blog its says 19. ??????
Joe
This is interesting. Proper Course has indeed increased authority to 74 since I did the analysis last week. Not bad for 5 days.
With regard to mine, I have two blogs listed http://messingaboutinboats.typepad.com/sailing and http://messingaboutinboats.typepad.com. One has an authority of 19 and the other 31 (actually it was 29 last week). As I mentioned above, when blogs have multiple listings I took the higher of the two.
Make sense
I’m just happy that I rank the same as Daily Sail which, if I’m correct, is a paid newsletter. So, maybe I should start charging to read my incredible insights.
I actually don’t remember registering for technorati…the “sailing” tag became pointless very quickly after I started using it.
I’m just happy that I rank the same as Daily Sail which, if I’m correct, is a paid newsletter. So, maybe I should start charging to read my incredible insights.
I actually don’t remember registering for technorati…the “sailing” tag became pointless very quickly after I started using it.
Yes! In the top 1.3 million! Result!
(and must re-register post the new format)
How very strange!
Thanks for the compliment & for leaving me in the running, but it’s weird that I’m where I am when, uh, yeah, Frogma’s not really a sailing blog.
Funny thing about looking at the links that are part of my “authority” is that I notice a couple of them are like the next generation of comment spam, where they don’t even have to leave a comment to clue you in. Somebody has linked to my Staten Island from the schooner Adirondack to get people to go to a site selling (among other furniture) Adirondack drawer pulls, and my mind-body winter dichotomy post has been “sampled” for an ad-heavy work-from-home site. I should get docked a couple of points for that.
Fun list though, I remember you doing this last year & almost falling off my chair when I saw it – “I’m in WHAT place?” – thanks for putting it together.
BTW too late for the Stupid Boat Names contest but last week I paddled past a motorboat named “Big Bunz”. Even if the owner’s last name is Bunz, and he’s large, I just can’t imagine why someone would want to name their boat “Big Bunz”.
And if someone else were to buy that boat, would it still be bad luck to change the name, or is there some sort of loophole for egregious lapses in taste?
Technorati’s system has a few holes if they’ve picked up no other windsurfing blogs in their “sailing” category.
If Big Bunz was the name of a sailing blog that it would do quite well. I’d link to it!
Staying with the name category, “Egregious” would be a fun name for an over-the-top yacht.
Hi
I went through the same excercise last summer, see
http://neversealand.downtothesea.org/2007/08/06/technorati-authority/
The striking thing to me was how low technorati rated the very excellent intheboatshed.net, by designer Gavin Atkin. Also SIMBA has a low rating, perhaps because it is in Italian. Attuworld outperforms all wet/sailing blogs.
Maybe there is a U.S. bias?
Here are some Google pageranks to chew on:
http://evk4.blogspot.com/ = 4
http://neversealand.downtothesea.org = 3
http://www.attuworld.com/ = 5
http://www.intheboatshed.net/ = 4
http://horsesmouth.typepad.com/ = 4
Happy blogging,
David
May I ask where you folks are going for the comparitive ranking chart from Technorati, or Google pageranks? Thanks!
I used Technorati