Internet Marketing Top Blog List
November 25, 2008 Posted by Tyler CruzMy fellow blogging rival (rival since he’s now beaten me 2-0 in our head-on competitions) Gyutae Park from WinningTheWeb.com recently launched an Internet Marketing Top Blogs List on his blog.
Such a list is always a useful tool as it not only allows you to track your progress (as well as your competitors) as a growing blog, but also lets you find related blogs that you might be interested in exchanging links or borrowing ideas from.
Gyutae wasn’t the first to think of such an idea. 45n5.com, now DigitalProductReporter.com, had made a popular top 100 list for "Make Money Online" blogs around 1-2 years ago. However, the Internet Marketing Top Blogs List is much more powerful since instead of just taking PageRank, Technorati, and Alexa data, it takes data from a plethora of various sources including:
- Feedburner RSS Count
- Alexa
- Compete
- Technorati
- PageRank
- Yahoo Backlinks
- StumbleUpon Reviews
- del.icio.us Saves
- Outbound links
- Votes
Before I give my take on the list, I think Gyutae needs to strongly consider moving the list to the top of the page. Currently, the page has a bunch of boring information that gets even more boring when you’ve seen it a hundred times. While the information is important and useful, there’s no reason why it can’t be shown BELOW the list.
This is what the Internet Marketing Top Blogs List looks like in my browser (on 1920×1200 resolution too!):
That definitely needs to be shown below the list. But that’s an easy change.
Getting back to the actual list: overall I think it was pretty well done, and I know that Gyutae spent a pretty penny getting it custom programmed. However, there are a number of issues that need to be addressed:
- Buggy. I only tested this in IE7, but I’m sure I’m not the only use who uses IE7. There are a few bugs with the list such as it not loading when trying to access multiple paginated pages, and the rank seems to list multiple blogs under the same rank. If this isn’t a bug and was intentional, then it definitely should be "fixed" as it’s pointless to have a Top List and have many people tied for the same rank.
- The voting system needs to be removed. I’ve already spoken to Gyutae about this several times but he remains pretty stubborn about it 😉 If you look at the screenshot below you’ll see the column with 5 stars. Gyutae allows visitors to rate blogs, and this rating is then taken into account when giving calculating the point system for each blog. While Gyutae assured me that the voting system isn’t weight heavily and was just put there to add some community feel, I believe that the voting should be removed entirely and have absolutely no baring on the final results. It’s just too easily gamed and judgemental. Users could cheat and falsely raise their votes or have their own readers vote for them – the most likely result.
- The calculating system needs to be tweaked. Not all the various metrics are weighed equally, but Gyutae still has some work to do as the results of the list are a bit off as I’ll explain below.
In the screenshot below you’ll see that I’m ranked 116th (along with some others: there’s that bug I was telling you about) out of 293. While I was hoping for a better rank, I can’t really complain as there are a lot of great blogs on the list and being ranked the top 116th best Internet marketing blog on the Internet isn’t too shabby if you ask me.
But when I looked at some of my listing neighbours, I felt a bit cheated. Perhaps this is just my rude ego talking, but I don’t think my blog deserves to be ranked next to blogs such as: Huomah.com (92 RSS), PalatnikFactor.com (21 RSS), or Cre8pc.com (496 RSS) which are shown just above and below the screenshot range.
They are rated higher (or close to me), it appears, because they have a higher PageRank. I have a very low PageRank of 2, but Gyutae, being an SEO consultant, out of all people should understand that PageRank is pretty much meaningless these days. I’m not just saying that because I have a low PageRank – there are many sites that are authority sites but have low PR. Hell, JohnChow.ca only has a PageRank 3… does that mean his blog is only slightly more popular than mine?
So Gyutae definitely needs to work on the algorithm some more, but I can understand that is must be very difficult to balance it correctly. If he hasn’t already done so, I’d suggest making RSS the most heavily weighted, followed by Technorati (since it’s reasonably accurate), Yahoo backlinks, and Compete.
While this post probably sounded like a giant slam on the Internet Marketing Top Blogs List, the truth is that overall it’s pretty good. It’s definitely better than the 45n5.com (now DigitalProductReporter.com) top 100 list, and if Gyutae tackles most of what I brought up in this post I have no doubt the list will often be referred to on a lot of Internet blog’s (or at least their advertising pages *smile*) in the future.
Many bloggers have a low pagerank because of having paid reviews that aren’t “nofollowed”.
JohnChow.com has been penalized for this as well. If you ever Google “john chow” you’ll noticed he doesn’t show up.
I don’t believe you’ve been penalized for paid reviews, but probably because you have paid links that aren’t “nofollowed.” Hence, the reason why you show up first when searching “tyler cruz.”
Well, anyway, that can be changed if you submitted a “reconsideration” request.
Haha JohnChow a page rank of 3…that is stupid
Maybe Google penalised him or something
I always think that traffic is more important than pagerank by far.
This is a great review. I got my site listed and I think I am in the 200’s of top IM blogs which is not too bad but not too good. I would love to make my way to the first page.
Great idea to have this list and a great review of it
Yes, Google penalized John a while ago, but it’s not hurting him in any way. He still makes over 30k a month.
google helped him get there though
I think everyone will have a different opinion on how the list should be ranked. Great job for being listed, Tyler. I think that’s a pretty great accomplishment in itself!
Sounds like an interest project Gyutae has started. I like the concept, but I agree with Tyler that the system has some flaws.
Gyutae must have put in a bit of work to get this online. It’s a really useful list of blogs, especially if you want to look around some internet marketing blogs. The system has flaws that you’ve already recognised but I guess everything does when it’s just been created. Thanks for writing the review Tyler, I failed to spot some of the things you talked about! I was too engrosed in the figures and checking out the blogs.
If it were up to me you shouldnt even be on this list. All you do is talk about your life, rss number and your affiliate competitions with paid reviews thrown in the middle.
Quit being such a ego idiot tyler. your blog has nothing to do with marketing and even if it did your posts wouldnt warrant the quality to even be called one. Get over yourself, its obvious even the people around you think your a joke. The only people who seem to follow you are the newbies and the non english talking indians who don’t know any better.
And what do market, Jason, pop bottles and newspapers? You sound like a real expert in recycling!
I wish I was on that list 🙂
Hey Tyler,
Thanks for the review. You bring up a lot of good points and I’ve already fixed some of the issues.
-I increased the points scale to reduce the number of blogs with the same ranking.
-I moved the actual list above the intro text. This is okay now that most people have read it and are returning just to see the list.
As for the voting system, I’d like to have it there because it adds a level of interaction. Sure, it’s easily gamed but so is any other metric. All of the different metrics in aggregate make the list more accurate. The voting points aren’t weighted heavily at all and is usually offset by the other factors. In other words, no one is going to move up more than a few places because of the user voting.
I’m still working on tweaking the algorithm, but I think the rankings now are actually quite good. The problem with TylerCruz.com is that a lot of your stats don’t reflect your actual readership and traffic – so it’s hard to rank more accurately.
Can you be more specific about the bugs?
Looking a lot better Gyutae 🙂
As for the other bugs, they seem to be resolved right now – I was receiving a Javascript error in IE7 at times, and sometimes when I clicked on a paginated link (like the 2nd page of results, for example), it would come up empty, but I just played around with it a bit right now and it seems to be working fine.
What I like about Gyutae’s list is it shows the metrics, so if one disagrees with a ranking, they can look for their favorite factors themselves. I like looking at PR, Alexa, and subscribers. Backlinks are fun number to look at (problogger’s number is ridiculous). When I visit a new site the first things I look at is Alexa and the RSS Chicklet if available. Neither is definitive, but it gives me an idea of the site I am visiting without having to fire-up the SEO toolbar.
Lol Tyler, talk about being a bit harsh 😛
-Mike
I doubt if John really cares now, he still makes a decent living from his blog.David naylor gone up 3 places – hardwork really pays as most new blogs are pulling their weight as well. Thanks
This is a nice list.
this is a great list and good points Tyler. It looks like Gyutae already made some of the suggested changes