Unplanned downtime

We just had some unplanned downtime, so sorry if this caused anyone any problems. I’ll be making some changes over the next few days that may require small service outages, so if you encounter any problems in this time, please try back an hour later.

Technoranki Update

I’ve now set up part of the traffic tracking code for technoranki.

If you are listed in BritBlog, you can now get your tracking code (you must be logged in first).

I probably won’t get a chance to write the traffic-processing code until next weekend now, so this means your traffic data won’t be incorporated into the blog ranks until then. If you can start putting the tracking code on your blogs though it will give me some real data to play with, and this will be really helpful.

If you spot an error, please drop me an email about it, remembering to describe what went wrong and include any error message that may have appeared.

Remember this is all new code, so it hasn’t been properly tested yet. Please bear with us while we get it all working properly

Thanks!

Top of the Blogs – request for comments

Several people have said to me that technoranki should take into account blog traffic as one of the factors used to calculate blog rank. I’m inclined to agree, but have held of this far for two reasons:

1. It would require people to have a tracking image on their site
2. It could put too much load on this server, bringing all the sites down!

I think I may have a fix for point two, so the question is: would people put the tracking images on their sites? To make this kind of measurement a factor in the blog ranks I need a majority to be in favour of it. Using traffic as contributory factor to rank will clearly bias that results in favour of those with the tracking code, so before I do this I’m keen to hear what other people think.

Using tracking images will allow you to display real-time icons of your ‘blog rank’ (like the Google PageRank) on your blog, and this may add an additional interest factor to the service. The icon will be the same size as the current BritBlog icons, so should be easy to integrate with your sites.

So what do people think? Personally I’d like to try this. If the traffic is too much we can always look at getting another server online. If we go ahead with it, I’ll need a bit of time to set it up, and then it will probably take a week or so for the statistics to sort themselves out.

Blog Backlog

We’ve got another blog backlog I’m afraid, so apologies to all those waiting to have their blogs reviewed. I’ve done a big batch tonight, and the annoying thing is that about 60% of them originate from Asia and are all SEO related junk!

There’s also been a lot of self promoting “business” blogs. I reject a lot of these because I don’t think they add value to the directory. If you run a business blog then here’s a tip: talk around your business and market – don’t just promote yourself as you won’t get in! Thinking aloud, maybe the business listing should be paid for. What do people think? Most of these sites don’t link back to BritBlog either, so I feel a little bit used by them. Of course if they were to contribute to the running costs of the site, then maybe we could put up with it…

There’s also been a spate of people submitting RSS feeds and not blogs, so if you are one of those you’ll be getting a rejection email in you inbox shortly.

Anyway, if you’re waiting to be reviewed please bear with us – we’ll get there in the end!