Top Sailing Blogs According to Technorati

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.