Guess I’ll have to try harder.
Wikio ranks Appellation Beer No. 2 among US beer blogs in its November listings. This is only the second month for the US rankings, and just like last month Beervana is No. 1. I know this because the folks at Wikio sent me a sneak preview, which I’m sure you’d rather look at than my commentary. Seems pretty interesting just days before the first Beer Bloggers Conference. (Commentary will follow.)
Jeff Alworth of Beervana offered a good look at the methodology last month when he showed up in the top spot. Take the time to read it, and consider his caveat: “no one reads beer blogs.” Obviously he means “hardly anybody” because he, like I, appreciates that you are reading us.
Pete Brown has been recapping the UK rankings for more than a year. This has led to interesting conversations across the way, given that if there’s anything beer bloggers like writing about more than beer it’s beer blogging.
I particularly appreciate that Martyn Cornell of Zythophile (No. 5 this month in the UK, with a bullet) asked one set of good questions, then still more.
But to return to the US rankings and the upcoming Beer Bloggers Conference. I don’t know if these ratings will be discussed, but I do know there are seminars on things like SEO that you can see here (that’s “search engine optimization”). All this will surely make the Wikio rankings dynamic and interesting to watch . . .
. . . if you consider navel gazing a sport.
No. 19? I’ll take it. Last month I was No. 140. Maybe the numbers hadn’t ripened yet. Glad I could at least make the U.S. list, considering Thirsty Pilgrim has never been based in the U.S. Shhhh.
I wonder if I fluctuate with the US-Canadian exchange rates.
It might also be related to the BCS rankings. You know, the Oregon factor.
Seating at the blogger conference will be by rating. That means you get Bryson to your right.
Perhaps they saw beer bloggers now have a conference and thought it was time to provide a separate rating for beer blogs. Or perhaps they saw the Complete List of Beer Blogs on the BBC site, which is up to almost 600 in North America alone. Regardless of the methodology, it is good recognition for beer bloggers!
first stater: I’ve always been to Bryson’s left.
I dont know about the rankings. A Beer in Hand (mine) comes in at #48, one spot in front of one of my favorites, that I know is much better/popular (hoptalk). But I’ll take it. Congrats on being #2
There’s a weird issue of incentives here, too. You get ranked well by the number of other blogs on the list that link to you. So if you regard this as a competition, you’d be inclined to be frugal with outbound links to rivals’ blogs. I’ve been especially profligate in linking to others this month, and I confess that there was a little devil on my shoulder saying, “don’t do it, man, you’ll lose the top ranking!” Fortunately, the angel on the other shoulder said, “that was a good post and deserves to be seen by all nine of your readers; link it.”
Still, a funny quirk.
In the UK, Wikio has evidently been tweaking with the algorithms to take rather more account of current visitors, which has meant that a beer blogger who put up one (comparatively) hugely popular blog (4,000 hits in two days) not actually about beer has shot up 39 places to the top of the list this month.
Don’t know if they do it differently for North America, but the US Wikio rankings don’t match that well to the Alexa rankings (based purely on three-month hits – these are global ranking figures, btw, not solely US)
Wikio rank…………name………………………Alexa number………..Alexa rank
1……………………..Beervana………………..1,125,630………………………5
2……………………..Appelation Beer……….1,152,800………………………6
3……………………..Brewpublic……………….707,066………………………..4
4……………………..Brookston BB……………414,242………………………..1
5……………………..Seen Thru A Glass……1,816,734……………………….7
6……………………..A Good Beer Blog……..465,794…………………………3
7……………………..The New School………1,968,436……………………….9
8……………………..Drink wt Wench…………438,701……………………….2
14……………………Better Beer Blog………1,896,010……………………….8
20… ………………..It’s Pub Night……………2,180,689……………………10
where, as you can see, Jay Brook leads, Ashley Routson at Drink with the Wench is second and Alan McLeod flies the flag for Canada at number three.
All three of those do far better than the top UK beer blogger by Alexa ranking (which is, ahem, currently me – if I were in the US I’d be number five on that list), but the rest of the US top 10 by Alexa rank are pulling in very similar numbers to the other top UK beer bloggers. I’m guessing this is because, while the US beer scene has to be at least five times as large as the UK one (because your population is five times ours), it’s perhaps much more parochial, in the sense that maybe mostly only people in the North West would read Oregon-based beer blogs, mostly only people in New England read the Maine-based beer blogs, and so on. So most US beer bloggers may be drawing their audience from only 60 million people in their region, rather than the whole 300 million in the nation.
It’s also true that having a good ‘legacy blog portfolio’ helps bring in hits, in that a lot of my own hits come from past blogs, about the difference between porter and stout, the history of beer glasses and so on, rather than current ones.
But ultimately, no, even the most popular of us looks to be talking to a number of people that totals less, every week, than the circulation of a small-town newspaper. And across the “beer blogoverse” (sorry) we’re mostly speaking to the same people.
Thanks, Martyn. I’m pretty sure I prefer the Wikio methodology ;>)
Alan and I have already had the discussion about if STL Hops is a blog or a website, but it speaks to a pretty good-size, very local audience. That should have value to an advertiser. It’s an entirely different animal than those getting ranked, but I’d sure like to see more sites like it.
I agree. I think the regional forums, like here in Ontario Bar Towel, are vital. Not worse than blogs but just different. I like blog to mean one person’s point of view. After all it is still a “log” of one’s experience.
I used to pay attention to Technorati & other shite like Wikio. It’s all a scam & they don’t even charge you for money. The only thing worth a damn is the cold hard facts one gets w/ Google Analytics.
I’d like to think that the stats I look up on Google Adplanner are semi-accurate to scale but they probably aren’t (they’re definitely not dead-on accurate & are low-balling stats big-time). I still think that site is the most accurate public source though.
Unfortunately, there are only 2 beer blogs actually show enough traffic to register stats on there: The Full Pint & Brookston Beer Bulletin. You might think you get more hits than those sites but realize that you need to multiple it out by at least 2x or 3x or maybe more…
-Adam
For what it’s worth, “you” is not directed toward Stan but is “you” in general for anyone that looks up the stats for those 2 sites now. Cheers! 🙂