New Wikio Blog Rankings are out. Wikio doesn’t measure how many visitors a website has – it measures the number of reactions they get from the rest of the blogosphere. It’s odd being marked as ‘more influential’ than the BBC’s Nick Robinson, but that simply suggests that excluding readership gives very strange results indeed.
It’s becoming sort of traditional for me to extract the Lib Dem blogs from their list to see how well we’re doing in ‘reaching out.’
As a side note, we’ll have to see if Nick Clegg’s piece in Labour List is a good example of “reaching out” – he did promise to do exactly that when he ran for the leadership, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise when it happens. I had a chat with Matthew Hanney, Nick’s political advisor, to find out what was going on – was reassured that it’s not the end of “equidistance” and that Nick would write a piece for Conservative Home too, if they’d have him. Personally I find any sort of association with Labour pretty hard to stomach, but then as we’ve all established I’m not a politician.
I don’t need to spell out that any sign of a coalition with Labour would be the end of my relationship with this party though. 
This months Wikio rankings show good progress for some – especially relatively new blogger Mark Thompson who’s showing a very canny knack of growing his blog very quickly through rather cunning use of social networking (and being prolific and energetic, which always helps!). In fact this month marks a bit of an upset to the Lib Dem ‘Top 3′ that’s been fixed ever since the Wikio Rankings started.
I certainly don’t think this list reflects the ‘Top 10′ blogs in terms of what exclusively Lib Dems read and enjoy – something, perhaps, for Ryan over on LibDemBlogs.co.uk to think about while he’s scraping all our feeds?
| 1 (6) | Liberal Democrat Voice | Climbs 1 |
| 2 (23) | Charlotte Gore | Climbs 14 |
| 3 (27) | Mark Reckons | Climbs 28 |
| 4 (31) | Liberal England | Falls 2 |
| 5 (33) | Quaequam Blog! | Falls 2 |
| 6 (36) | Himmelgarten Cafe | Climbs 8 |
| 7 (48) | Peter Black AM | Falls 14 |
| 8 (50) | People’s Republic of Mortimer | Falls 4 |
| 9 (73) | Stephen Linlithgow’s Journal | Climbs 2 |
| 10 (77) | Miss S B (Jennie Rigg) | New Entry |
Caron said...
6 Jul 09 at 9:09 am
Congratulations to all! I woke up somewhat surprised to discover that I am at number 11 in this list, coming in at 79. Liberal Vision is snapping at my heels, though, and Lady Mark and Lynne Featherstone aren’t so far away so I think I should just enjoy this while it lasts.
In terms of what I read, I would say I hang on to every single word that Costigan, James and Jennie write, cos even when I don’t agree with them, they’re brilliant, and most words that everyone else in the top ten writes.
I am surprised that Liberal Burblings isn’t in there, either cos he’s really good ditto for Sara Bedford and Cicero’s Songs because I consider all of those must read.
Niklas Smith said...
6 Jul 09 at 9:26 am
Congratulations Charlotte and Mark!
Ian Eiloart said...
6 Jul 09 at 10:05 am
Gotta get me one of those comment icons. They’re very pretty!
Charlotte Gore said...
6 Jul 09 at 10:10 am
I’ll have to see about turning it into a plugin
Jennie said...
6 Jul 09 at 2:43 pm
* basks in her n00bness *
Oranjepan said...
6 Jul 09 at 6:20 pm
Like I said before, a top20 would strike beneath the tip of the iceberg.
MatGB said...
6 Jul 09 at 10:34 pm
Problem: Many of us don’t use LDB for our regularly read blogs (your records will show that I came here from my Feeds page on DW).
We’ve noticed in the Golden Dozen that the known-to-be better read blogs appear less than the lesser known blogs, pretty sure that’s because a lot of people subscribe directly to the blogs they really like.
The only metric I could think of that’d be fairly reliable would be if Will et al at Cowley St could release a page views analysis of the campaign buttons, but that’d exclude me and Jennie (who can’t use them), yourself and others who chose not to use them, etc.
Personally, I care not–I actually prefer Wikio to an extent because it’s quality of readership to an extent–other people that can be bothered to run their own blog value your opinion.
But ultimately my target audience is tiny, and I know I’ve got their attention when I need it.
Yes, it can be gamed, and I’m tracking many different ways that seem to be effective, but anything can be gamed, if you want to check readers, put the tracking image into your feed so it displays on everyone’s feed, etc…
Ryan Cullen said...
11 Jul 09 at 10:46 am
I’ve done as you wished, but agree with Matt that the stats aren’t really worth much.