La Russophobe has updated her report which ranks various English language Russia blogs. The update refines the previous data, in order to try to give a better picture of which is the most “popular” English language Russia blog.
According to the new LR index, the top five English language Russia blogs are:
- Russia Blog
- La Russophobe
- Very Russia Tochka Net
- Robert Amsterdam
- Siberian Light
(The LR survey lists the top 16 blogs in total, but for some mysterious reason, I only chose to reprint the top five. Wonder why….?)
The refined results seem to be more balanced than previous results although they should still be treated with due caution - as with any statistical analysis which has a limited dataset, there are bound to be oddities that skew the results quite significantly. For example, Siberian Light is proving to be challenging to rank, as LR rightly points out.
Firstly, I had a massive surge of traffic to a single post in February, which is still skewing the Alexa rankings somewhat. This will push Siberian Light up in the rankings for the next month or so, until the Alexa ranking evens out.
But, on the other hand, SL fares poorly in LR’s new formula for ranking technorati links, which divides the number of technorati links by blog age. This is because SL is several years old, but took a one year hiatus in 2006, thus losing a lot of inbound links. So, for SL at least, I suppose it all balances out in the end.
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Alright, La Russophobe’s obsession with all these essentially meaningless numbers is just ridiculous. To put things in perspective: I write a tiny English-language blog about Slovenia, a country of barely 2 million. The majority of the planet can’t even find the damn thing on a map. It’s not even a fifth-rate power. And yet, according to my all-important technorati ratings (and Alexa for that matter) it’s well above La Russophobe. And yet my site is a burp in the wind. A blip. All this obsessing with numbers, and trying to frame it as a demonstration of how influential or imporant one’s blog is, is lunacy. Pure lunacy.
Here are the facts: Siberian Light is a great blog. Full stop. I’ve been reading it for a long time, missed it when it was gone, and am glad that it’s back. That’s all one really needs to know. La Russophobe, on the other hand, is clownish in its obsession with determining its own “popularity.”
The methodology is dodgy. For example,Technorati’s blog count is only over the last 180 days, so any adjustment by age is iffy. When one makes that adjustment, one gives a huge benefit to newer blogs that have links from others but have not made it onto blogrolls. In my book, the net effect is to punish older blogs.
And it’s all silly anyway. I agree with Michael. One can finesse the numbers however one wants and come up with whatever methodology one thinks yields the most accurate result (which apparently is to penalize Seattle-based blogs in this case). By the way, you receive no bonuses on Technorati as a result of traffic. It only measures links. We got hell of traffic lately at Registan.net, but not necessarily links.
And really, even if we had. when it comes down to it, it’d be hard to take any of the stats numbers as an accurate measurement of influnce, readership, power, etc. Our Alexa number beats almost all the mentioned Russia blogs (‘cept yours at the moment, Andy) (oh, and the number two in our sphere shows most of the Russian sphere up too) and our Technorati number definitely does. But honestly, I don’t put too much stock in those numbers. More importantly, I know we’re influential because we’re banned in Uzbekistan and widely read by government officials, activists in the region, analysts, etc. The numbers are very misleading. Alexa tells a different story than Technorati, and one’s site meter tells an entirely different tale as well. Focusing on those numbers too much gets one into a pissing match.
Well done Nathan -being banned is surely the ultimate sign of recognition! In old Ireland banned stuff = good stuff. To Irish ears therefore banned means brilliant) Congratulations!
I certainly agree that one shouldn’t read too much into surveys like this.
There are more important signs of a blog’s worth than links/traffic. For example, one of the things I personally enjoy most about Siberian Light is the debate it generates in the comments sections (well, usually…). That, to me, is more indicative of this blog’s “worth”.
Ultimately, though, the main value I place on Siberian Light is that I enjoy the time I spend writing it. Without that enjoyment, Siberian Light would be valueless for me personally.
Nonetheless, I do have a weakness for these kinds of surveys – for some reason, I find them strangely compelling.
I disagree with the methodology entirely on the grounds that my own blog does not appear at the head of the rankings. A far more accurate method would be to multiply the number of visitors by the blog owner’s distance Eastwards from Moscow, divided by number of McDonalds in a 500 mile radius.
Blog-Statistics are true as the ????????? (five-year plan) in the former Soviet Union (Smile).
In my Swiss based Russia-Blog I supplemented and optimized the LR-statistics. The result is a new and neutral “Top 20 Ranking of the Russia Blogs” (English and German language).
It would be perfect, if all Russia Blogs would use the same software like sitemeter.com for counting the unique (!) visitors.
Agreed?
Quite amusing and right on Michael M.
I think honest blogs by real people should be separated from faux blogs with agendas funded by NGOs and PR agencies.
I think that makes Siberian Light 2 or 3.
We must return to the moist, soft, warm, Slavonic, obshchina, peasant deity of Mokosh and abandon the urban, reptile, mechantile religion of the Greeks and Jews, who want to turn us all into wolves while we are sleeping so they can suck our blood. We Slavs are just one big extended family with no bounds of ownership, we are embraced by our great thunder father Tsar and our long armed earth mother Mokosh. The Tsar is the most wise thundering high priest of Mokosh. The land is our fertile mother Mokosh who nourishes us, that which we put into the ground she returns to us. Plowing is like taking a knife to tear my mother’s bosom, then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest. Land is loaned, not owned, it is our mother heifer, the great round egg of fertility, which holds the blood of our ancestors in its yolk. No, we must warm the earth with fire and water it so that our ancestors may be with us when our doors and windows are open as the roots of our tree, whose crown is Perun of Thunder, father of all Tsars. We must sew the scalps of the urban reptile people into a big tent where our ancestors may visit us to be warmed by our fire. Cattle are sacred for we must be as cattle and live in herds and abhor the abomination of individualism. It is the wondrous glory of our women to be white heifers. We must get all humans to be as cattle in one grand obshchina for their salvation. Fear of censure binds all into collective behavior for their can be no individualism or privacy. The Greeks and Jews tried to destroy our great communal bonds, with greed, inequality and competition, but we softly fit into the landscape with equality and brotherhood. Mokosh reveals the weather to those who put an ear to the ground and even greater secrets to those who sleep on the ground. Mokosh always works in circles, wind whirls, seasons cycle, history cycles, the sun is a round blini. Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. Moskosh is the big round toilet bowl which whirls us all back home. Any attempt to break the cycle of history by modernization can only result in times of troubles. Turn East and say: “Moist Mother Earth, subdue every evil and unclean being so that he may not cast a spell on us nor do us any harm.” Turn West and say: “Moist Mother Earth, engulf the unclean power Veles in your boiling pits, in your burning fires.” Turn South and say: “Moist Mother Earth, calm the winds coming from the south and all bad weather. Calm the moving sands and whirlwinds.” Turn North and say: “Moist Mother Earth, calm the north winds and the clouds, subdue the snowstorms and the cold.”
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