Drum roll please….
OK, the new Top of the British Blogs list has gone live!
The technical details
The results are based on data gathered by the new blog ranking service, technoranki. Technoranki constantly makes a range of measurements for each blog in it’s database, and then calculates a score/rank nightly.
Every few minutes we ask technoranki for the position/rank of one of our blogs, and update the list. If the blog isn’t found it will be added to technoranki and checked out ASAP.
(End of the technical bit).
Comments
The service is new and experimental, so you may be surprised by some of the results….
We’re working closely with technoranki as they improve their ranking algorithm, so if you have any comments or suggestions please do let us know. You can either leave a comment below, or drop us an email.
Update 23/01/2006: Please see this post
December 23, 2005 at 12:00 am
So what do people think? Any surprises in the listings, or is it as you would expect? There are a few more factors to be taken into account for the ranking process, and these should be introduced over the next few weeks.
Anyway, it would be interesting to hear some feedback from you about the charts
December 23, 2005 at 12:44 pm
It’s good to see the chart back, but it is confusing. Technoranki is a bit mysterious. Perhaps, as its proprietor, you could shed some light on how it works, especially as it produces radically different results to your previous system.
For example, you have Carkesniffers Beware at number five. They let you view stats gathered by a couple of services. Bravenet reckons they get an average of 60 visitors a day. That’s not to be sniffed at, but it’s hardly record breaking.
December 23, 2005 at 3:22 pm
Hi Stephen,
Yes, I can see what you mean. The big difference between the two is that the old BritBlog ranks were based on traffic, whereas the new blog ranks are based on a range of measurements.
The jury is still out on the traffic thing. I’d like to measure traffic for the technoranki stuff, but that would require everyone to display some sort of icon that we track requests for. This may be hard to achieve (especially as I want this service to extend beyond BritBlog), and would bias the ranks in the favour of those that (a) knew about the service, and (b) could be bothered to use the image.
Technoranki draws information from a range of places, and weights various criteria differently. At this stage I’m not too keen to describe how we do the ranking, but the important thing to remember is that there are several sources for our data, which should make it harder for people to trick- which was always the problem with the traffic thing.
When I’ve added more criteria to the ranking algorithm I will publish some details on it. The important thing though is to make it hard (if not impossible) for people to influence the results. It is meant as a bit of fun, but I would like to have some good methodology behind it.
So to conclude, please do point out anomalous blogs – I’m keen to try and iron them out, so do either just comment here or drop me an email.
Cheers
December 23, 2005 at 6:16 pm
I look forward to seeing what ‘measurements’ are being used because this is baffling me!
December 24, 2005 at 2:05 pm
Bit of an eclectic mix so far -be interesting to see how it settles down over the coming weeks
December 25, 2005 at 2:46 am
Yeah, pretty interesting mix – number one blog at the moment is one which hasn’t been updated for 18 days!
Maybe that’s the secret! No more posting for me for another 3 weeks…
December 25, 2005 at 1:08 pm
Congrats on getting it live!
Would it be possible to view top sites by the category?
Happy xmas btw
December 26, 2005 at 12:11 am
JB: I’m looking at incorporating update frequency into the ‘maths’… Watch this space!
Lee: Perhaps… It’s certainly something I’ll look at. And thanks for the festive wishes – merry Christmas to you too!
December 27, 2005 at 12:18 am
update frequency/ number of posts or something really should be taken into account most good blogs post often!
December 27, 2005 at 8:47 pm
Hi Mark
Now Cakesniffers Beware has disappeared from the chart, I’m feeling a little guilty. Having them at number 5 was anomalous to those of us who expected to see blogs that get lots of traffic in the chart, but you’ve explained your rankings don’t take traffic into account.
My comment was intended as an invitation to you to justify Cakesniffers’ position, not a request that they be excluded. If it was my comment that led to them being removed, then the BritBlog chart appears pretty arbitrary.
All best
Stephen
December 27, 2005 at 10:10 pm
Hi Stephen,
No need to feel guilty – I’ve not done a thing. Positions within charts will fluctuate constantly – especially while technoranki just has BritBlog blogs in it’s database. (It’s to do with how I sync the two databases.) This will be less noticable once technoranki gets more non-BritBlog blogs in the database.
January 2, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Oh good oh! Up again. Well, umm, all I was going to say was what an interesting list. However I’m not sure how good the formula can be. Call Centre Confidential shut up shop last March, so it’s definitely not based on recent posts, recent visitors, recent commenters or people who have recently linked or discussed the site – I can’t think of any other criteria that would be appropriate?
Maybe it’s the wrong time of year to look at a list like this – a lot fewer readers over Christmas etc.
January 3, 2006 at 3:12 pm
Jonny: the formula is still being worked on. At the moment there is no way to measure traffic, and measuring post frequency is not so easy. You see there is no need for RSS o have a post date, and at the moment I can’t add a ping server to the site as it will kill my server! (Hint: I need a second web server…)
The only alternatives I can think of in terms of post frequency are to download everyne’s feeds al the time and look for updates, or just to do a comparative “have they updated since we lst visited” thing.
The former is not possible as the site grows, and the latter doesn’t have much resolution. Visiting each site in the database takes about three days at the moment, so I could only look to see if sites have been updated in the last three days or not. I guess this is better than nothing, but it’s still not a good measurement… Maybe I’ll try and implement this anyway as a stop gap.
Cheers, Mark
January 3, 2006 at 7:34 pm
Ah – I lost you at around the ‘ping’ mark, Mark. My technical knowledge is slightly lower than yours. But if I’m offered any cheap servers off the back of a lorry then I’ll get in touch…
January 3, 2006 at 8:17 pm
Hehhe, sorry Jonny. Keep your eyes peeled then! Cheers
January 4, 2006 at 6:52 pm
well – i don’t have any idea how the ranking is decided, but yesterday i was number 8 and today I am number 3, so i guess I kind of in favour, (until they work out I probably shouldn’t be there, I’m not complaining)
sam
January 6, 2006 at 2:25 am
now I’m complaining, I dropped to number 10 the next day woosh….
January 6, 2006 at 1:48 pm
It’s truly dynamic sam! Remember there are still some changes I need to make, so don’t take it all too seriously at the moment
January 7, 2006 at 1:13 am
it’s ok – i was just joking.
to be on there at all is honour enough!
January 8, 2006 at 11:37 am
how can i find out my ranking if i am outside the top 50?
January 8, 2006 at 3:15 pm
That’s coming soon Gerald….
January 10, 2006 at 5:28 pm
Good luck with developing the ranking system. There issome interesting stuff in the Top 50….
January 11, 2006 at 4:27 pm
Is it possible to go higher than the top fifty – I’m thinking the top 10,000 which could mean that I’ll have a chance of getting my blog in the charts.
Does anyone have a rough guide of how many visits (or whatever) is required to get anywhere near the top 50?
January 11, 2006 at 5:53 pm
Christine: At the moment technoranki does not track traffic to blogs. This is because it would be impossible to get everyone to put some tracking code on their site straight away. Until this happens the charts will be skewed in favour of the people with the code.
I am slightly reluctant to ask everyone to include some tracking code on their sites for this reason, and would like to come up with an alternative metric. However, it looks like this may be the only solution to the traffic-measuring problem
January 12, 2006 at 12:37 pm
I have code on my site. Do I have the wrong code?
(please be nice to me when answering this – rather than saying “Look! Nobody reads your blog now just leave us alone!”)
January 14, 2006 at 10:31 am
Even more baffled!
January 20, 2006 at 12:20 am
Christine: You don’t need any code on the site at the moment. This may change in the future… watch this space.
January 21, 2006 at 6:15 pm
Thanks Mark. By the way, thanks for all your hard work, this really is a wonderful site, I get plenty of people coming across via Britblog. The Top of the Blogs is an excellent idea, I hope you iron out the difficulties soon.
I hope the whole internet community feels sorry for me, because until I get in the top 50 I’m having to troll around the internet begging for visits, I’m a modern day Little Match Girl.
Poor me.
February 27, 2006 at 6:45 pm
I noticed a couple of inbound links coming from this site and was pleasantly surprised to see I’m in the top 20 although I seem to be going up and down like a yo-yo in these charts despite the fact that my Technorati rank is pretty consistent. Related Blog Entry
February 27, 2006 at 8:06 pm
The technoranki blog rank is based on a range of data — not just traffic or technorati position.
Because the sample pool is comparatively small (~4000 blogs) compared to technorati (~29 million blogs) you will see a lot more movement in the positions.
March 3, 2006 at 7:38 pm
How come a lot of the sites in the top 100 don’t even display the Technoranki code?
March 4, 2006 at 12:45 am
The code allows technoranki to track traffic and visitor information. This only contributes to a part of the overall score, so if you get a really good score in other tests/measurements then they could out-weigh the traffic stuff. Make sense? (It’s a bit late at night…)
March 16, 2006 at 4:19 pm
I’d like to agree with the person who requested that there be an option to view more than the top 50. It would be good to get some idea of where we stand on a week by week basis.
Regards
N
March 28, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Please may we have more than the top 50 listed?
March 28, 2006 at 6:59 pm
Nick and Graham, yes, we’ll certainly look at adding this functionality to the new web site.
April 23, 2006 at 1:18 am
In the past few weeks my site has moved up technorati’s ranking by 1.7 million places to about 290,000th out of 30 million, but I’m stuck on a “3″ on technoranki’s rating.
I don’t really mind, but just out of interest, does the code update your ranking automatically or periodically?
Does it matter if you swear a lot on your site?
I appreciate the grading system might be completely different between the two, but I was surprised to see one move so much, and the other not at all.
I would assume links to your site is included in the algorithm. Whatever an algorithm is.
Good luck with Britblog, I think it’s great.
English Ranter.
April 23, 2006 at 4:37 pm
The technornki project is sort of on pause at the moment while the move to the new server happens. I keep using this an excuse it seems, but we’re nearly there! Only parts of the project are running as it was killing this server on regular occasions!
Please bear with us on this one.
July 26, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Does the rating system include more than technoranki? What about page rank from Google? And like someone mentioned earlier, does not posting have an effect?
July 26, 2006 at 4:21 pm
The rating system here is based entirely on Technoranki, yes. Technoranki uses a range of factors (when it’s up and running…) to calculate individual blog scores.
Posting has no effect at the moment, but it is something that will be looked at in the future, yes.