Technorati vs. Blogged vs. Zimbio - One Week In

Posted by Hans de Ruiter

It has been a week since this blog was added to Technorati, Blogged, and Zimbio. So far, my predictions have been slightly off-mark. As expected, not much extra traffic has been seen from any of these sources. However, it was originally thought that Blogged would provide the most traffic. Instead, most traffic (out of these sites) has come from Technorati.

Technorati being the top performer came as a surprise. Given its ranking system, the initial expectation was that new blogs would receive no exposure. However, there is a small back-door in the form of "blog reactions." On Technorati, the a blog's listing includes its recent posts and, recent posts from any other registered blog that linked to the blog being listed (i.e., "blog reactions"). Since "blog reactions" are not ranked based on blog popularity or "authority," blog posts from low ranked blogs can also feature, albeit still in an obscure place.

Blogged initially looked good because it has human editors reviewing blogs. However, it turns out that Blogged is a much less dynamic site than Technorati. Given the 6.7 editor's rating that this blog received, the possibility of any blog posts making the front page, is almost impossible. Perhaps if I had posted more blog entries before the editor reviewed this blog, the rating might have been higher (post frequency is part of the rating). Nevertheless, this still would not have made any difference; without appearing on the front page, or the next two to three pages, the chance of anyone noticing a new blog on Blogged is fairly remote. In fact, the only traffic from this site was the editor visiting in order to rate the blog (two page views total). 

As expected, Zimbio has largely been a waste of time. Zero visits to this blog have originated from Zimbio. Zimbio copies blog entries verbatim into WikiZines, providing a link back to the blog. This provides little incentive for readers to visit the blog itself as the whole post is already provided. Added to this, Zimbio articles reference images directly from the source blog. Thus, every time someone reads a copy of a post from this blog on Zimbio, they use up bandwidth on this server, despite not actually visiting this blog. The other issue with Zimbio is that its front page is almost exclusively celebrity gossip. This blog is completely out of place in such an environment.

Overall, the total traffic from any of these blog directories/search-engines has been low. Since signing up to these sites, a total of six visits originated from Technorati, one from Blogged (the editor reviewing the blog), and zero from Zimbio. Very slow beginnings, but it is a start.

Comments (1) | 16 July 2008