Hmmcast #115 mp4

Ezimba looked at the traffic from the top 20 social bookmarking sites and I thought hey, good idea, maybe it would be fun to analyze the top 10 and bottom 10 of the Technorati top 100 list using the same two traffic sources: Quantcast and Compete.

Until Ezimba’s link I hadn’t recalled ever seeing the Quantcast site before, have you? I like how they let you put their code on your site so you can help them get more accurate stats.

The latter, Compete, I had to request to stop emailing me because they kept asking me over and over again to link to their blog. I don’t mind friends and people I know emailing me to point out interesting posts and sites but I find it intrusive when strangers do that completely unsolicited repeatedly. I put it right there with one way (selfish) trackback spamming. Get to know me a little bit first, hang out, and then start feeding me links you think I might be interested in receiving.

Compete also rubbed me the wrong way when they had one of our sites established since 1999 listed as “not trusted.” How on earth could their site which came along years after ours (many, many thousands of dollars worth of business transacted) and judge whether or not our business site could be trusted? When I challenged Compete on this they wanted me to tell them what site I was referring to which made me think, hmm, can’t they use their search engine? Needless to say the whole service left me shaking my head. They advertise at Techcrunch though!

I also compiled this list because I’ve written that the Technorati top 100 list not being a very good benchmark for a site’s traffic and this data shows some wild differences between two different third party sources which helps to support that notion. It will be something helpful hopefully that I can point back to people in the future (the Hmmcast video joking aside).

Newer bloggers in particular can get discouraged when looking at the numbers for these top blogs thinking the numbers are unattainable. Not true! I would counter that by saying the only numbers that matter are the stats your server provides and not those of any third party stats or tracking service. It is also possible that your site already has more traffic and readership than some of the blogs on the Technorati Top 100.

How can that be? One might think that a site that gets thousands of links from other blogs (authority via Technorati) has a lot of traffic but that logic isn’t always true. Measuring how many sites link to you is more about popularity among bloggers than popularity among the internet. You can follow the source Compete and Quantcast links to graphs and additional details including links to all of the sites ranked and mentioned.

The stats were all polled manually this morning 5/15/2007 and it took longer than I had expected (like 2+ hours, yowsa). It might be interesting to visit these same sites a year from now using the same third party services (if they are both still available) and compare the data.

Technorati Top 100
1. Engadget
Compete: 601,317 (-13.5% month, -6.0% annual)
Quantcast: 533,062
Technorati authority: 27,601
Category: gadgets
Author(s): group

2. Boing Boing
Compete: 240,146 (-28.4% month, -0.6% annual)
Quantcast: 305,161
Technorati authority: 20,971
Category: mixed
Author(s): group

3. Gizmodo
Compete: 537,243 (+10.9% month, +153.0% annual)
Quantcast: 5,317,395 (global), 3,417,771 (U.S)
Technorati authority: 19,007
Category: gadgets
Author(s): group

4. Techcrunch
Compete: 122,149 (+15.3% month, +754.9% annual)
Quantcast: 83,008
Technorati authority: 18,350
Category: technology start-up
Author(s): group
Notes: Duncan Riley added as new writer within last month.

5. Huffington Post
Compete: 508,604 (+29.0% month, -3.4% annual)
Quantcast: 2,855,483 (global) 2,416,859 (U.S)
Technorati authority: 15,989
Category: politics
Author(s): group

6. Lifehacker
Compete: 366,154 (+16.8% month, +146.0% annual)
Quantcast: 3,545,494 (global) 2,171,755 (U.S)
Technorati authority: 14,784
Category: productivity
Author(s): group

7. arstechnica.com
Compete: 284,042 (+14.5% month, +24.8% annual)
Quantcast: 284,263
Technorati authority: 13,627
Category: technology news
Author(s): group

8. Post Secret - postsecret.blogspot.com
Compete: stats not available for subdomain, only shows blogger.com stats
Quantcast: 157,922
Technorati authority: 11,898
Category: secrets mailed on postcards
Author(s): group, user submitted, edited by Frank Warren

9. Daily Kos
Compete: 191,153 (+6.5% month, -12.5% annual)
Quantcast: 140,118
Technorati authority: 11,687
Category: politics
Author(s): group

10. Michelle Malkin
Compete: 129,002 (-3.2% month, -26.8% annual)
Quantcast: 107,844
Technorati authority: 10,113
Category: politics
Author(s): Michelle Malkin

Hmm thoughts and tweeners
Only one of the top 10 in the Technorati list is a single author blog (Michelle Malkin #10). 3 of the top 10 are politics oriented, 2 of 10 contain user generated group content.

A few of the tweeners (sites ranked #11-89 on the Technorati Top 100 list) are discussed on today’s Hmmcast #115 linked at the top of this post including blogs by Steve Rubel (#69, authority: 4,119) and Robert Scoble (#38, authority: 5,793). Warning: sense of humor required.

Technorati top 90-100
To break into the top 100 as of this writing your site would need around a 3,200 authority, which means links from 3,200 different sites in the last six months (533/month, 18/day).

90. Gothamist
Compete: 158,406 (+21.6% month, +9.3% annual)
Quantcast: 107,844
Technorati authority: 3,502
Category: New York
Author(s): group

91. Defamer
Compete: 307,897 (-14.7% month, -19.9% annual)
Quantcast: 1,241,399 (global) 890,571 (U.S)
Technorati authority: 3,434
Category: gossip
Author(s): group

92. Overhead in New York - overheardinnewyork.com
Compete: 28,753 (-8.7% month, -43.2% annual)
Quantcast: 15,485
Technorati authority: 3,405
Category: overheard
Author(s): group, user submitted

93. Download Squad
Compete: 76,038 (+70.4% month, +509.0% annual)
Quantcast: 677,105 (global), 378,501 (U.S)
Technorati authority: 3,405
Category: software, downloads
Author(s): group

94. Tubetorial
Compete: 1,177 (+22.0% month, n/a annual)
Quantcast: <2,000 and not tracked (rank 4,850,619)
Technorati authority: 3,369
Category: how to videos
Author(s): group, user-submitted, edited by Brian Clark

95. Signal vs. Noise - 37signals.com/svn
Compete: unable to track the blog subdirectory traffic
Quantcast: unable to track the blog subdirectory traffic
Technorati authority: 3,294
Category: software, design, business
Author(s): group

96. TV Squad
Compete: 636,436 (+8.7% month, +124.6% annual)
Quantcast: 397,908
Technorati authority: 3,215
Category: television
Author(s): group

97. Cute Overload
Compete: 61,960 (+10.2% month, +4.5% annual)
Quantcast: 35,193
Technorati authority: 3,207
Category: animal pictures
Author(s): group, user submitted

98. Javimoya.com/blog
Compete: unable to track the blog subdirectory traffic
Quantcast: unable to track the blog subdirectory traffic
Technorati authority: 3,172
Category: ???
Author(s): ???
Notes: Foreign blog.

99. Ask A Ninja
Compete: 51,460 (+10.9% month, +355.9% annual)
Quantcast: 43,193
Technorati authority: 3,127
Category: video, Q&A, humor
Author(s): group, user submitted

100. Stereogum
Compete: 83,489 (-10.2% month, +49.0% annual)
Quantcast: 83,412
Technorati authority: 3,126
Category: music
Author(s): group

Third party stats accuracy
In the past I’ve been critical of using third party stats for anything other than musing because every one of them I’ve ever seen, used or tried is inaccurate. Thus I wouldn’t put too much faith into the accuracy of Quantcast or Compete if they even have stats for your site. If they can’t even track all of the top 100 at Technorati, then forget about the rest of us.

Looking at this site’s monthly unqiue traffic using the third party service Site Meter (click on the number counter at the bottom of the page to see the stats yourself) and Google Analytics you’ll see the answer is “not very” so keep that in mind.

Monthly average unique visitors for MakeYouGoHmm.com
Site Meter: 69,210
Google Analytics: 61,000
Compete: 18,730 (-20.0% monthly, +87.7% annual)
Quantcast: 15,981
Technorati authority: 243

Final thoughts
There is one common component that makes up the Technorati Top 100: group blogs. Many of the top 100 Technorati sites by authority are not single authored blogs. If you aren’t part of a group blog somewhere and would like to increase exposure to your writing, then find one to join. Maybe one on the list, if you can get a ticket in the door.

And check out Duncan Riley who I first remember blogging at The Blog Herald and then he sold that and had a gig at B5 Media. That ended somewhat mysteriously and then he did a short writing stint at 901am. Now he’s got the most exposure gig he’s ever had at Techcrunch. I’m going to have to run him down for an interview and get the scoop on his writing adventures. He’s like the Gulliver’s Travels of blogging.

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