Is there a way to view the popularity of the various IndiBlogs?
My thoughts:
The comments to post ratio sounds good - but wouldn't that become a way of ranking individual blog posts, rather than the blog itself?
How do we know how much traffic a blog has, unless it's shared with IndiBlogger in a standard format? Alexa rank/Google PR? Frankly I'm not a big fan of using either of them for ranking on IndiBlogger - the reason being, bloggers will simply check out the highest ranked blogs and ignore the rest. What about the new bloggers, or bloggers who write great content but simply don't know anything about SEO? Shouldn't they get an equal chance?
I'm leaning towards a system which combines the following and assigns a rank accordingly:
- Bloggers rate blogs on the network, based on parameters we set (quality of content, originality, etc.)
- We extract whatever information we can from the blog's feed (frequency of posting, etc.)
- The blogger's level of activity on IndiBlogger, specially the forum - frequency and quality of replies (which reflects on the blogger's willingness to help others) which I think is an important aspect.
- Helps lesser known blogs get an equal opportunity to obtain a high rank.
- Helps separate the enthusiastic and hard working bloggers from the lazy ones (I'm one of the latter!)
- There are blogs out there which have great SEO, decent content and a professional looking theme - but with no soul nor personality. The blogger's level of participation in the community would be a good way of gauging the sprit in which the blog is maintained as well.
Anwin: Thanks for replying, and all of us do appreciate the work that the Indiblogger team is doing. Since you asked, here are some ideas. Remember that there will never be one set of rankings that will be accepted by all, so trial and error is the way to go.
Ranking Blogs: Criteria could include Viewership, followers (those who subscribe). Some Blog collection sites allow readers to 'rate' blogs (5-stars or Thumbs up & down). This does come with the risk of ballot-stuffing. Note that ranking of blogs is also subject to the power-law behavior (i.e. the rich-get-richer). In other words, only the highly rated blogs get read and continue to be rated. To circumvent this, I have seen sites that issue rankings afresh every week. Only new posts for the week get rated and other blogs with very old and dated content get lower rankings.
Finally, if your team does go this route, please consider having channels as well as a few overall ranks. Channels could be: Politics blogs, Travel blogs, finance blogs, movie/music blogs, food/recipe blogs and personal blogs etc.
This again serves to highlight more blogs to more of your readers.
Ram
yes, I think there is a need for this, i ask renie ( indiblogger) , see if they come up with this crazy idea of ranking blogs considering various factors Charms!!! Shanker Bakshi www.shankerbakshi.com
Renie, Don't go by the ideas I give. Most of them are crazy. Try out a few that you have in mind. We can evolve a system as we go along. By the way, the Indiblogger initiative is highly appreciated. Perhaps you can let us know a bit about yourself and your team. Like in an "about" - or is there one already somewhere and I could not find it.
A very good start, Binaryday. Interesting distribution through the various PR levels.
Ram
Guys, need your feedback on the reviewing system. What I'm thinking is:
- We should allow only one "request for a review" topic per blog.
- Anyone who asks for a review should review three other blogs first.
Now, this led me to thinking that some bloggers will simply "review" a few blogs without taking too much interest in it, simply so they can post their own for review. So if we integrate the reviews with the ranking system, then the ranking becomes obsolete.
So in addition, I feel that we should elect a few "expert reviewers" (we already have a few!) who's reviews will have an impression on the ranks, while the others do not. The expert reviewer will have the option of assigning a seperate rank for various criteria - usability (1-5), content (1-5), focus (1-5) etc.
What say? Please give me your feedback/ideas as well as what the ranking criteria could be! 
Binary, I checked my (News, Views & Serendipity) PR yesterday. And to my surprise it is 3/10. Any idea why it is so.
Renie, Ranking by a panel of expert reviewers is a good idea. You can choose and pick. Start off with this. We can all refine as we go along. Let's not get into paralysis by analysis.
Just one more point: Make the rating criteria a widget that we can post on our blog (go to my blog and scroll right down and see on the side bar - there is one that I have from Blogged. The expert panel of Blogged gives the first rating. This can then dynamically change based on what rating by anyone)
@Binaryday - I've written a post on the IndiBlogger blog, as well as mine about your rankings.
Not exactly n this topic ... but did not want to start off a new thread (as it is my threads remain unanswered 
) Is it possible to have a page on Indiblogger that is like a rolling display? The rolling display can indicate the blog that is updated as soon as it is posted. This can be done by linking all the RSS of all the members of Indiblogger to the page. That will make members stay on for a longer time and it will be fun seeing new blogs written every minute (second?).
@Amitabh, linking thousands of feeds won't be possible, parsing and updating them takes too long - I'm looking into developing a ping service (like pingomatic) so our server is immediately notified when an IndiBlogger posts something new. Is this the kind of rolling display you're talking about?
@Binaryday - will check out your post and give you my thoughts as soon as I have the time to do so!
Renie,
Exactly! Won't that be fun.
Amitabh
@Binaryday, does an RSS mixer update in real time as soon as a blog is updated? Or will it update the master feed every few hours?
As promised, the "Review My Category" option has been given much needed functionality. Now, every request for a review is linked to the blog listed on IndiBlogger, so the same blog cannot be submitted again. Also, you'll find a link from your IndiBlogger profile to the reviews of your blogs. All review pages have a link to the blog at the top, so it's easy to find.
More addons to this feature coming soon, once we get a few other tasks done.
Feedback, please!
Earlier number of hits to a website was considered the factor to find the popularity of a blog. That actually is a factor but more importance should be given to the time a visitor spends in a particular blog. I am analysing some website using analytics tool and i have experienced that some visitors spends only a second in a particular website or blog. On seeing the design of a particular blog which was visited earlier they used to hit the back button or exit. If the time spend by a visitor on a blog can be analysed then it would be great to find its popularity.
@Arun - welcome to the discussion! I agree totally, the time spent by a visitor is the real test of how good a blog is. Wish there was a way to track that. @Binaryday - any suggestions from the coding whiz?
@ Renie : "Review my category" feature.. simply awesome man!
@Binaryday - I just realized that Alexa does not rank sub domains (myblog.blogspot.com retrieves the value of blogspot.com, not the blog) - does that mean your rankings include only self-hosted blogs?
Sign in to reply to this thread
