Friday, November 17, 2006 3:13 PM
As part of the new Blawg, the calculations for determining "Most Popular" has changed. Rather than simply ranking popularity based on click-throughs, there are now a number of criteria that are factored into the popularity rankings.
Another item related to popularity that has been addressed on the new Blawg site is filtering popularity by categories. One comment I received over the years was that a general, "most popular blawg," list was nice, but not necessarily useful to everyone. In short, visitors to Blawg came for different reasons, and "most popular" should recognize that. For example, someone who visits Blawg looking for Intellectual Property (IP) blawgs is typically more interested in finding the most popular IP blawgs than the most popular blawgs overall.
With this in mind, the new Blawg directory automatically sorts each category (or subcategory), top to bottom, by a blawg's popularity. Using my IP blawg example, visiting this category results in a list of all IP blawgs in the directory, sorted by popularity.
Of course, realize that "popularity" does not mean that one blawg is better than another. Indeed, I would argue that some of the better blawgs out there may never have huge followings simply due to their specific focus on an area of law or subject matter. And, lower readership numbers does not mean that blawg is unsuccessful. If you are targeting a specific niche audience, and reach that audience, whether the audience numbers 40 or 4000, matters little.
For those whom enjoyed top rankings under the old system, I apologize if the changes cause a short-term negative impact with regard to referrals. But, rest assured, the new system is not static and there are lots of new directory features in the pipeline that are focused on refining the blawgosphere's popularity metrics. In the end, cream always rises to the top.