Who Links Who? at Bene Diction Blogs On

Who Links Who?

Am I the only one who has been noticing the trend reflected at Who Links Who these days?

(I’m not listed, so I’m going to comment freely)
And no, this is not a complaint, it’s an observation.
I’d like to hear what you think and see.
It used to be that international blogs made the top ten and there was a good balance of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox blogs from several countries at the top.
Who Links Who ranks the number of links into a blog.

It’s shifted.
The top ten being linked consistently lately are US; Protestant and Catholic, and I’ve noticed that trend for at least a week.
American Zines are overtaking blogs for links-in.

I predicted this a few months ago, and I think it is a shame, because a lot of good blogs aren’t getting well deserved attention, and diverse and rich voices from other countries aren’t being as heard and noticed as their American cousins. And I think the god-blogosphere is the poorer for it. Nor am I the only one that saw this coming.
One Australian, New Zealander, and Canadian make the top 20 currently being linked.
Another Australian is 29th, and a blogger from Maylasia is 31st today.
How often do you read or link to a blog from South America, Europe, the UK, Australia, the Phillipines, Japan, New Zealand, Canada etc?
Linking is one factor when you look at traffic to a blog.

Oddly enough, it is two Canadians, David King and David Janes who have developed and made the ranking tools for the god-bloggers possible. BlogTrack and WLW gives us a pretty fair picture of what is going on.
WLW and BlogTrack follow one of two portals and no web-rings.

Two top Canadian god-bloggers, for reasons of their own, aren’t listed in the WLW ranking system. I tend to suspect a lot of international god-blogs aren’t readily available to the US blogging community through specific god-blog portals, even though an Australian started the concept for this blogging community, and another Australian created the first ranking tool for god-blogs.
And in the opportunities I have to communicate with others as a meta-blogger, I’ll let you in on something.
There are things being developed that won’t rely just on rankings, that will be useful to all of us.

Portal: A Web site or service that offers a broad array of resources and services, such as e-mail, forums, search engines, and on-line shopping malls. The first Web portals were online services, such as AOL, that provided access to the Web, but by now most of the traditional search engines have transformed themselves into Web portals to attract and keep a larger audience.
A Web portal is commonly referred to as simply a portal. - Webopedia

Webring: A group of Web sites similar in content, linked together in a ring. From any site in the ring you can move the next related site, eventually returning to where you started. It’s an easy and fun way to visit many sites on a specific subject. You can also search the ring randomly or move backward and forward. - TechTV

Blog: (n.) Short for Web log, a blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly-accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.
(v.) To author a Web log. - Webopedia

Zine: Short for electronic magazine, the name for a web site that is modeled after a print magazine. Some e-zines are simply electronic versions of existing print magazines, whereas others exist only in their digital format. - Webopedia

So, what do you think?

Published 5 years, 8 months ago

10 Responses to “Who Links Who?”

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1 William Holzer on Mar 10th, 2003 at 9:50 am

Thanks Bene! I need all the help I can get. I’m at school so email doesn’t work, I thought I get to you this way. Take care,—Will
2 Dave King on Mar 10th, 2003 at 9:54 am

I’m wondering what Google is up to with regards to blogs. Yes they’ve bought pyra but what next?

I’ve got a project started that will allow people to set up a search engine on their own machine and choose where to draw their list of sites from, blogs4God, some one else’s page or what ever. And of course you can mix and match. But time and motivation don’t always align well
Does this idea have merit? Let me know.

-Peace
Dave

PS If someone want to run WLW against another set of links other than blogs4God just let me know I’m willing to hand out the code.
3 Richard Hall on Mar 10th, 2003 at 11:05 am

I kid myself that I’m not worried about my place in the “rankings”, and then find myself feeling pleased if I should move up a place or two. I get irrationally irritated when I find a site near the top of the list which has multiple links from a smaller number of sites. And there’s no reason for it apart from my ego.
Sad.
4 Bene Diction on Mar 10th, 2003 at 12:06 pm

Richard: I think we all need a bit of ego to blog, and I’ve noticed as I’ve become more accustomed to the nuances I er, check my rankings a bit less often. It’s a difficult balancing act though, not unlike real life.

Dave: Your steadiness and faithfulness with WLW is remarkable, and I for one am very grateful you have helped hundreds of us so much while juggling a busy life.
Dumb question time….how would your search engine differ from a blog roll or favorites?

Good morning William! You are most welcome.
I like your new feature ‘Shorthand’ at HourEleven.
5 Dave King on Mar 10th, 2003 at 1:22 pm

Topic based search.

Find all blogs that have the word Iraq the front page, or Java or Jesus or ….

I see it as a meta blogger tool to find people who get missed.

- Peace
Dave
6 Darren on Mar 10th, 2003 at 5:13 pm

Sounds like a great idea Dave.

I think WLW is a great tool. Very interesting to see how the network links up. It’d be great to somehow visually see how the ‘net’ looks and see who the key linkers are and if there are any ‘clumps’. Not sure if that is possible.

I too had noticed the trend that you point out Bene - of an increase in certain links. I guess thats somewhat reflective of the web at large though - or is it?

I guess too that its reflective of B4G which definately has a concentrated US flavor. Its an interesting one because I don’t see that anyone is at fault with it - its just a reflection of where most people are surfing.

I think its a bit of a pity though - not because the US sites are bad - but because many of the international sites offer some pretty fresh perspectives and are of high quality. Its a pity that many of them will not be acknowledged in this way though.

Good post Bene - you’ve got me thinking
7 Macker on Mar 15th, 2003 at 8:32 pm

“Who Links Who ranks the number of links into a blog.”

forgive me, I’m a little dense. explain?

according to WLW, I have 9 links associated with my site … so the 9 reference is how many links to other b4g sites I’m linking to?

I’m so confused …
8 Bene Diction on Mar 16th, 2003 at 9:07 am

Hey Macker:

I don’t do techy talk, and I’m denser than you, so I passed your comment onto the the orginator of WLW so he can explain to you.
9 Dave King on Mar 16th, 2003 at 10:27 am

Hey Macker,

As of Sat Mar 15 22:06:43 MST 2003 WLW found 11 links to Pray Naked Experience from other blogs listed on blogs4God.

WLW looks at all the blogs listed at blogs4God, takes every single link and tries to match that link to one of the other blogs. WLW then creates a page for each blog listing all the matched links. The main page shows the raw count of links, some people refer to this count as the “rankings”.

-Peace
10 Mike on Mar 16th, 2003 at 12:32 pm

Bene - thanks for pointing out WLW. I may never leave my computer’s side again! (At least once we get moved in.)

I have to admit to a bit of the ego thing too. I’m afraid I’ll be checking this thing regularly now!

Peace