The prior post jumps off the year end Pew Research study on blogs and has some personal thoughts regarding god-blogs and demographics.
A Look at some god-blog Aggregators and Lists
A protestant women4god aggregator was set up about a month ago, but is currently unaccessable. There are 38 blogs.
Update: A member of the aggregator indicates there are 6 non US–3 Canadian and 3 non-North American.
In the Catholic sector (St. Blogs) there are 315 listed. I haven’t broken it down by gender age or country yet. This is a list as opposed to a feed.
The Alliance for Moderate, Liberal and Progressive Blogs has 36 listed. 4 were none-US, 4 are female bloggers. This is a web ring - not an aggregator - and includes catholic, orthodox and protestant blogs.
The Church Directory is a list of evangelical blogs. I counted 182 blogs, and have not broken them down by gender, age or country yet. This is a blogroll, not an aggregator.
This Theology aggregator has 22 blogs. I counted 2 non-US and one female blogger.
Apologetics Aggregator. It’s currently down, but if I read correctly I counted 22 blogs, one non-US and one female blogger.
Unright Christians has 43 blogs I counted two US group blogs, 1 Canadian, 1 unknown male, 1 down. 7 were UK blogs. 4 were female bloggers. This is an aggregator.
Progressive_Adullamite is using the Xanga platform which has the following web-rings: Christians and politics, British Christians, Politics, Religions and Philosphy, Theology outside the box and Christians for Social Justice.
I’m not familar with how web-rings work or how to navigate them.
The List is a page of 125 Canadian god-blogs divided by province and territory. I haven’t gone through it yet to break down gender.
The Blogdom of God is an aggregator which is also down at the moment.
In attempting to count the blogs at the owners site, it’s unclear what is in the aggregator or the number of blogs that have joined the aggregator. There are 49 blogs.
The PCA aggregator - Presbyterian Church in America. I counted 41 blogs, and have not yet broken them down by country or gender.
Aggregators and lists are run by individual bloggers who are looking for others that share similar beliefs or are looking to reach out past the blogs they know to the larger god-blog subdivision.
In looking to find others, some owners and joiners are interested in raising their rankings at sites such as The Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem. The number of links that makes it appear a blog is ‘popular’ does not necessarily translate into ‘hits’ or actual traffic (readers) to the blog.
This is making a realistic picture of god-blogs more difficult than the 2003 god-blog demographic study, since many of the bloggers starting these aggregrators came from the same premise and initial blogrolls. The newer protestant aggregators have a lot of sign up duplication and it is next to impossible to obtain fair figures without the technical expertise to sort everyone out.
Who Links Who is the list of god-blogs using the blogs4God portal. There are currently 1280 Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant blogs. I have not yet gone through it to break it down by current, gender or country.
I’m not looking at audio, video or photo blogs, not because they may not be out there, but because they are specialized. Cameras, software etc, are financially out of reach for most people as well as the expertise to play with them.
Published 3 years, 6 months ago
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I did a quick count on the Women4God blogs list, and of the ones I’m already familiar with and I counted 6 non US–3 Canadian and 3 non-North American. There may be more–there are several blogs there I haven’t checked out yet.
Thanks Rebecca!
Bene thatīs impressive and fun reading. I couldnīt stop playing through all the aggregators!
Hey, I’m a major blog booster, but playing may be the operative word. The god-blog sub-division may not be as eclectic as I initially thought.
I gave up trying to sort through the duplications.
I can respect people wanting ranking, and wishing to be part of a group.
From the outside looking in, sorting aggregators out is a bit more of a bite than I meant to take.:^)
From the looks of it, the god-blog sector hasn’t grown much, it’s just networking more. The aggregators are the latest toy - they seem to be glorified blogrolls that gets bloggers ‘ranking.’
I think the aggregators and the blogrolls are more than toys. They’re a tool, and useful ones at that. Joining an aggregators and blogrolls is one of the most efficient ways I know of to increase regular visitors to your site.
I suppose they don’t work that way if someone already gets lots of traffic, but it you’re a peon, they are a good way to get noticed, and if those new visitors like what they see, some of them will become regular visitors.
What they do, I suspect, is increase traffic more to the tail of the TTLB ecosystem, for instance, rather than to the big guys.
I take it you’ve taken advantage of the aggregators or lists by putting your blog on them.
How many have you joined? What was your hit or session count before, and what has it been after, if you don’t mind me asking?
I joined 2 since Christmas–one blogroll and one aggregator. My traffic count would have been pretty consistant for several months before that, and it’s been around 100 hits per day greater than that for late January and February. To a really big blog, 100 hits per day is nothing, but to the little guy, it’s big boost.
I think it happens because when people join and aggregator or blogroll, they tend to run through the list and check out some of the blogs they haven’t noticed before. Some, of course, will be just one-time hits, but others will like what they see and begin to check in regularly. I’ve added 4 or 5 newly discovered sites to my daily round up of blog reads, and I discovered them by checking out the blogroll and aggregator. I assume something like that happens with most people who join–they discover new blogs that they like.