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02/03/2004: "All New Blogarama?"

Blogarama is a weblog directory. In my opinion it is the best weblog directory. This weblog has been listed there since last September, along with some 6 or 7 thousand others, so that people interested in reading blogs can browse the lists and link to weblogs they wouldn't otherwise have known existed. Listing weblogs sounds simple enough, but it's not. After a month or so of registering Cliff's Notes in other directories and seeing the results, I came to appreciate Blogarama's functionality and straightforward approach. Last October I posted a review of Blogarama describing the ranking system that sets it apart from the pack. Blogarama has a new look as of last weekend, and my first thought was what's changed, I hope they didn't screw it up? Click more.. below.

You see, the date the site was listed and the number of clicks "in" and "out" are all gone, Holy Mother of God, at least from the display. There goes the ranking system, I'm thinking, shades of Blogwise's Top 50 Blogs notice: "Due to abuse the top blogs has been 'frozen'. I will be making some changes to the way this is calculated in the very near future. In the meantime, apologies for the inconvenience." Right, that ranked list has been frozen since last September, that I know of, and probably longer.

Why is a ranking system important? Typically you go to a blog directory to find interesting new blog(s) to read. If you knew exactly what you were looking for, keeping in mind that few blogs specialize their subject matter, you could go to Google (or some "keyword" based blog directory), but if you're looking for an interesting blog rather than a recipe or a driver, you need to browse. Browsing thousands of blogs when 90% of them are, believe me, not at all what you had in mind can be tedious. A ranking system can help you isolate some of that really interesting 10% of blogs based on the blog's traffic.

At Blogarama blogs are listed in categories, not unusual, but within those categories they are ranked by the date they registered with Blogarama, within a count of the number of links back to Blogarama from each blog. That means you're not just faced with a list of blogs in alphabetical order, or worse, the order in which they were registered, but a list of blogs with the ones that that are getting the most traffic, from anywhere and everywhere, at the top of the list. Sure, you can still look for interesting titles and captivating descriptions, but you have something more to go on. Namely, unless the blog is very new, good ones get more traffic than bad ones, and some of that traffic clicks on the link to Blogarama.

If you're browsing and don't want to be limited by catagories, Blogarama helps you by lumping all the categories together in two sequences, "What's Cool," ranked by clicks into Blogarama (high traffic sites first), "What's Popular," ranked by clicks out of Blogarama to the site in question. These "link count rankings" are what set Blogarama apart, and I can't think of any better way for them to help separate the wheat from the chaff. Can you?

Anyway, most disturbed about the missing counts "in" and "out" next to each blog link, and what it might mean, I e-mailed Blogarama admin. I inquired about the "new look," and I got the new guy! Yes, a nice guy named Colin has acquired Blogarama from Charles as of last December.

Colin writes, "I changed the look as I felt the old look was a bit dated (I hope you like the new look!). The old look was functional and usable, but compared to other blog search/directory sites, faired poorly. I've tried to incorporate all the good usability layouts of the old site and personally, I think the outcome is a site that can stand with the best of them. OK, so looks isn't everything, but it helps."

"As for the functionality of the site, well, it remains basically the same, with the What's Cool/Popular/New sections ranked as they used to be (by mainly counting hits). The reason I've removed the Hits In/Out, is to first, keep it aesthetically cleaner and secondly, to keep users from trying to manipulate the rankings. Let me explain, the What's Cool section ranks listings mainly by traffic coming in from these sites. This is a good way of ranking them. The What's New section is pretty self explanitory. The problem lies with the What's Popular section. On the surface, it seems like a good idea, the more users who visit a site in the directory, the higher it ranks. The problem is once a site reaches the top in the What's Popular section, it will pretty much remain there, as users coming to Blogarama will click on What's Popular and look at the first 10 listings and say "well, I'll look at these then since they are so popular". Thus he/she clicks on the top one, making it even more popular and so on. So, the most popular ones remain popular because people think/say it is, not because it is. Although Blogarama does log IPs, it doesn't seem to matter to rankings if the site is viewed by the same person 100 times in a row...! I'll be changing this too once I think of an acceptable solution."

"Well, currently I'm looking at the ranking and search algorithms and finding better ways to produce better results. I think removing the In/Out display helps reduce those trying to boost thier rankings falsely. System transparency is good for the user, but leaves us open for manipulation. The solution lies in compromising."

There you have it. Blogarama is still the best blog directory around. Thanks, Colin.

If you're new to Blogarama and want to take a look CLICK HERE! Link opens in a new window. Yes, that will improve my ranking at Blogarama, and more people will get to read this great blog. OK?

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