There is something unseemly about trying to rank blogging, but I’ve always been a stats guy and so this week I looked at the technorati.com blog “authority” rankings. I don’t really understand them, why rankings go up and down. From time to time we get questions here about why certain blogs are on the “Featured SBC Blogroll” while others are not. The Technorati rankings are one way of explaining why certain blogs are featured.
When I was a coach, I was a little bit of a stats nut – probably too much so. But its ingrained in my DNA somehow. So, here is a listing of the Top Southern Baptist Blogs as ranks by Technorati. I recognize this is probably unhealthy, but its Saturday and time for some fun.
Currently, the top religion blog is “Desiring God” – surprise, surprise. It is followed by The Resurgence and then by Rachel Held Evans. The top blog by a Southern Baptist is Trevin Wax’s “Kingdom People”, ranked eighth.
1) Kingdom People – Trevin Wax
Ranked 964th overall, the only Baptist blog in the top 1000 overall. He is ranked 8th in religion blogs, with a religion authority of 788.
2) Al Mohler
He is ranked 12th in religion blogs, with an authority of 760. His ranking in politics is also fairly high.
3) Provocations and Pantings – Tim Brister
His religion authority is 714, placing him 25th overall.
4) SBC Voices
We have a religion authority of 708 and a ranking of 27.
5) Denny Burk
His authority is 688 and he ranks 36th overall.
6) Between the Times
With an authority of 674, they rank 40th.
7) Perry Noble
I am actually not completely sure Perry is Southern Baptist – hard to tell from his website. But he appears in our blog roll, so I’m including him. He ranks 81st with an authority of 620.
8.) SBC Today
There may be some blogs that I don’t recognize, but the next Baptist Blog I was familiar with was SBC Today at 286th overall, with an authority of 201.
9) sbcIMPACT
This group blog comes in with an authority of 112 and a ranking of 477.
10) Mark Lamprecht, Here I Blog
Mark ranks an even 500, with an authority of 111.
11) Alvin Reid (in case someone tells me Perry Noble ISN’T Southern Baptist, he moves into the 10th spot).
Authority is 110, and his ranking is 528.
Others: Jared Moore – Authority 109, Rank 565
Ministry to Children – Authority 106, Rank 675
SelahV and SBC Tomorrow (Peter Lumpkins) – Authority 104, Rank 752
(another of Hariette’s blogs “daily IMPACT” is at 842, with an authority of 102)
Paul Burleson “VTMBottomline” is at 1005, with a 99 authority.
Gunny Hartman’s “Semper Reformanda” comes in at 94 authority and a 1057 rank.
Is Justin Nale Southern Baptist? His site, “Thoughts of a North Carolina Baptist” is at 95/1233.
Chuck Grantham, the “Goula Blogger” comes in at 95/1233 as well.
Wade Burleson comes in at 93/1345.
Observations
1) There is no question that Baptist Blogging is not as influential on these rankings as it once was. I looked at the rankings a couple of years ago, and there were probably 10 Baptist blogs in the top 150 or so. But things have slowed down in our little world. Look at Wade Burleson at 95/1345. He was a regular near the top of the rankings until he backed out of the blog world. Bart Barber posts every time the Kansas City Royals have a 5 game winning streak. I wish I could go back two years and see the ratings then.
2) These rankings fluctuate rapidly. Take a week or two off of writing and your blog rank plummets. Howell Scott is just outside the top 1500, but he took about a month off recently. Now that he’s back behind the keyboard, I’m guessing his ranking will be rising.
3) It is more than possible that I overlooked a Baptist blog in the top 1500.
4) Remember, there are currently 10,118 religion blogs, so being in the top 1500 blogs is nothing to sneeze at.
5) There are several of what I consider to be the better Baptist Blogs that for some reason don’t even appear on the ranking. I don’t know why Baptist21, Micah Fries and Downshore Drift by Alan Cross – some of the best blogs in our little kingdom, do not appear on the listing.
Some of you young whippersnappers with lots of technical expertise can explain that to me.
So, there are some statistics. What are they worth? Who knows? I found it interesting. Here is the link to the Technorati.com Religion rankings. Select “blog” in the toolbar at the top and enter your blog name to see where it ranks.
I considered an alternate title for this post: When Preachers can’t sleep and feel like wasting time!
My blog isn’t in there because these days I blog often enough to make Bart Barber look like a blogging fool in comparison. ;-)It’s a far cry from the 6-8 posts a week that I used to average.
I appreciate the kind words, though.
No, there has to be some other explanation. Your blog doesn’t even appear at all in the rankings. There has to be some reason for that.
And 6-8 posts a week will wear anyone out.
Many people make me look like a fool in comparison.
Trevin’s blog is always an interesting read.
Christiane:
Dave did not list any Catholic blogs.
What are the Catholic blogs where you visit and dialogue? I would enjoy jumping over there and chatting about Catholic topics with you. I am sure there is much to learn.
Give me your top 2 or 3, and I’ll come visit you.
There are actually a lot of Catholic blogs – some with a pretty high ranking.
I figured there would be. But I wanted to get Christiane’s recommendations, especially on the ones where she comments, so I could visit with her in 2 different worlds.
Christiane, you out there?
Hi LOUIS,
Yep. I’m ‘out here’. How are you?
I don’t blog on Catholic blogs, no, but I do communicate with some sisters (nuns) who do have blogs, but privately. I consider them friends and part of my ‘support system’ personally. I do not show my correspondence with them to other people, although it is interesting at times, I’m sure.
I have read some Catholic blogs from time to time, but if you want to ‘learn’, I recommend examining some of the materials used by the Church formally for those making inquiries, not Catholic television programs, or blogs, or ‘apologists’.
I imagine as an attorney, you studied something of the history of ‘law’ and are familiar with the role that Church ‘canon law’ played in the development of law in Western Civilization countries. So, you already have an ‘intro’ into some of the thinking concerning ‘the natural law’ of God, and ‘the natural order’. I may be wrong, but the influence was so great that I’m sure you had at least heard of it in the course of your academic studies.
My advice if you are interested in ‘Catholic’ blog reading . . . take a look at what’s ‘out there’ and find a setting where you can feel that your questions will be honestly and respectfully considered, and answered in a manner that is considerate of your own theological background. You should be ‘respected’ and ‘welcomed’ and most of all, you should feel that you are able to communicate honestly and openly with the people on that blog and with the ‘administrators’. I think you can find a place to land in the Catholic blog world with no trouble where people will be very glad to ask you questions and to learn from you, as well. So, be blessed . . . and fear not . . . you have much that is good to share with others of my faith.
The highest I’ve ever seen my blog on there is in the top 40. And, I don’t have a clue why it was so high? I have the same amount of viewers today or more than I did then? I was posting more though; but, they were all reposts. I took the Spring semester off; and posted repeats for about 4 months. I wrote only a handful of new articles during that time. Technorati is crazy.
Dave,
Thanks for the mention. I have done some research on the Technorati rankings and I still don’t really have a good handle on how a blog rises in the rankings. I’ve got a pretty good idea, based on experience, how a blog goes down in the rankings 🙂 I knew that my Technorati ranking would take a hit when I stopped blogging for a while, but the time off was worth it. As to why some blogs don’t appear, you have to first go to the Technorati website to “claim your blog.” It’s my understanding that until you do that, your blog will not appear in their rankings. Others may have more information about that than I do. Thanks and God bless,
Howell
Since the inception of my blog I’ve always made it a deliberate, no-exceptions-permitted rule never to check statistics. I did register my blog on Technorati, because I didn’t want anybody else to register it before me, but I don’t look at the stats.
I figured early on that the stats could only serve one of two purposes:
1. To discourage me, or…
2. To put me in danger of pridefulness.
Neither of those were anything that I wanted. And I’ve been able to blog for several years now, never having encountered any situation in which I didn’t know what to do because I hadn’t looked at the blog’s stats.
I’m almost compulsive about stats if I know what is going on. The problem with Technorati is that I don’t really understand the rankings and “authority” system. I think it has something to do with who links to your blog.
Let me further say that, pretty much from the beginning, I’ve felt about my blogging the way that a person on Hoarders feels about the pile of filth in his or her living room. I’m embarrassed that I blog. I don’t mention my blog at church. People at my church know that I blog, but they didn’t hear it from me. I don’t promote my blog posts. You’ll never read on my Twitter feed or Facebook wall that I just posted something new at the blog.
I’m a husband and a father. I should be playing Yahtzee with the family. Instead, I’m commenting on your blog post.
I’m a pastor. I should be working on tomorrow’s sermon or witnessing to somebody. Instead, I’m commenting on your blog post.
I have a Ph.D. in Church History. I should be writing a paper to present at ETS or a book about the Bogard Schism. Instead, I’m commenting on your blog post.
I don’t want statistics to show that I’ve succeeded at it. I don’t want to brag about it. It’s a sickness. It’s an addiction. I’d like to find a cure.
I have a different take, Rev. Dr. Barber!
I’m giving a lecture on Sept. 29 as part of Baylor’s “Seminars for Excellence in Teaching” titled “Blogging Your Way to a Book”
http://www.baylor.edu/atl/index.php?id=70560
BDW, 😉
But maybe that’s because I’m not as good a blogger as you are.
Or maybe I just need to attend your seminar. 😉
Ha, well we will have snacks!
I admit to having wasted a ton of time blogging (more so commenting than actually blogging).
But, blogging has opened doors, professionally speaking. I’m sure a number of blogging Baptists out there have enjoyed great opportunities due to blogging. The flip side, of course, is that some people have suffered personally and professionally due to their blogging.
Blogging has probably opened more doors for me than it has caused any personal suffering. But I think that doors might have opened anyway, without the blogging. I’m sure that’s true for you. When you start doing something like that so early in your life, it’s really hard to know what might’ve been in order to establish a “control” for comparison.
The major problem for me probably has nothing to do with the actual medium of blogging. I don’t like having a “public persona.” Before Blogging, the people who had any sort of an impression of me had gained that impression from some actual, corporeal interaction with my person. It may have been a bad impression or it may have been a good impression, but at least it was an impression formed at close range.
Now, I meet people all the time who say, “I read your blog.” Maybe it’s the disadvantage that they (think they) know something of me while I know absolutely nothing about them, or maybe it is the fact that I have published SO MUCH in blogging, and the wrong (or right) selection could lead to an unrealistically bad (or unrealistically good) impression of me, but for whatever reason, it gives me the creeping willies to meet somebody who’s been in my presence for 30 seconds but thinks that he or she knows me.
Before Blogging, I could have an opinion and joust over it in the doctoral seminar conference room or in booth number three at Wild Bills and it was officially NO BIG DEAL. Now, I blog an opinion and it reaches to people who actually designed that program or made that decision or occupy that particular spot in the bureaucracy. I offend people. Suddenly my opinion matters more, not in the way that it actually shapes the world, but in the way that it affects people’s feelings a long way away.
I don’t so much like all of that.
But I keep doing it, because…I don’t know why…because I have something to say and I have trouble keeping from saying it. Like Newt Gingrich, I have very little message discipline or subject-matter control. I have ideas and I cannot help but write them.
You know what, I hardly ever mention my blog at church either. And few who attend my church read the blog. I think I keep it that way for the same reason that I don’t put Christian bumper stickers on my car – in case I misbehave I want to keep a little anonymity.
Blogging is informative . . . it’s just that sometimes it shows you how much more people don’t know than what they do know.
But finding out what they ‘don’t know’, that’s informative too in its own way.
And ‘questions’, I can see that they make some folks uncomfortable if they are prone to suspect an ‘agenda’ or a ‘motive’;
but most of all, I have seen discomfort where people are not very sure of how to answer, and find it easier to resort to ‘another way’ to handle my question instead.
I still ask. Many questions.
Sometimes, (actually a lot of times) I learn from an answer. For this I am always grateful.
As for the ‘other way’ of responding, I am understanding that this is all that the responder may know to do at that time.
I don’t answer questions from people sometimes, if I think the ‘question’ is just a form of ‘button-pushing’. It’s pretty easy to figure out, if it is.
Do I ‘button-push’ sometimes? Yeah . . . sometimes I do.
This one got me in big trouble on a certain blog:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlzVDDSfeeA&feature=related
(then there was the time I called someone a witch . . . that was around Halloween a few years ago)
may as well confess up all at once 🙂
Thanks for the compliment, Dave. Unlike Bart, I have looked at my Technorati rankings before. At different times, I’ve been in the top 100 of religion blogs with a fairly high authority. But, over time, blogs that once linked to me don’t anymore and I have gotten less traffic. Blogging consolidated a couple of years ago and much traffic moved to Facebook. I will often get more readers of my posts from Facebook than people just going to my blog.
Since I don’t just blog about SBC stuff (actually, I almost never do), I do want people to read, at least a little. That is why I write. But, while I write for a small audience, I don’t try to do so in a way that self promotes. I have called my blog the workshop for my mind where I create and experiment and sometimes rebuild things – and sometimes regret that I wrote what I did. It is incomplete, unfinished, often messy. And, because of that, I like people to read, but don’t really try to make sure that they do.
Oh, and making the Final Four of last year’s Blog Madness Tournament was MUCH better than any Technorati ranking! 🙂
Well, Alan, you can check your Technorati, because your ego is more under-control than mine is.
Usually, about the time I let my ego get out of control, I get one of those comments or emails telling me what an unbelievable loser I am. I guess God give some people the spiritual gift of ego deflation.
Just remember: at least you’re not me.
I hold onto that when I have nothing else.
Glad to help.
I don’t know about that, Bart. You and I both write about what interests us. As long as we keep doing that, it is profitable. It just so happens that for me, what I find interesting is not really what others find interesting – or controversial. But, writing helps me unpack my thoughts, so I enjoy it.
I don’t read any of the blogs as much as I used to, but I always enjoyed your take on things, even though I often disagreed with you on some of the issues we were discussing back in the day. It was worth discussing those issues, though, and you often provide a good forum for that. Keep it up. These days, we likely agree on most things, proving what I said back then – that we were in agreement on far more than we were in disagreement on.
I enjoy the writing. Like I said, I just don’t really enjoy the whole “public persona” thing. Which I have far less of now that I blog less, I think.
We can aspire to be big fish in what, if Dr. Merritt is right, is a VERY small pond.
The thing is, you’re out there now and there are people who want to know what you think. So, you’re kind of stuck with it: having been a public persona in the past, people will keep coming back to see what you say. Then, when you don’t say, they’ll misinterpret your silence.
Think about it: most of the noise right now isn’t about “current” positional leaders. It comes from people looking at prior leaders and asking questions about them and their opinions. New voices aren’t really being sought: the voices of people who were steady and reasonable then are sought now, because that’s what we need. So, those names that come up as having been big bloggers back then are searched for now.
By the way, Bart, your comments here are all nonsense. Now, I don’t know about your ego and all, but your blog succeeds because you have something to say, a unique perspective that people want to and need to hear.
I have often agreed with you and admired your unique perspective.
I have sometimes disagreed with you but still admired your perspective.
You’ve got something to say and blogging is one way to say that.
Yeah, but that’s little consolation coming from an unbelievable loser like you.
😉
There I am, humbled again. Thanks.
That “unbelievable loser” part, just in case you missed it, was me quoting you from comment 20, in a feeble attempt at humor.
You used the requisite smiley face!
I suggested this to Wade Burleson sometime ago, partly as a joke, but I think it is a good suggestion.
I believe at the SBC meeting there should be a booth or a hotel ballroom or something reserved for SBC bloggers. All the bloggers could have a table, or not, and all the commenters could come in and meet their favorite blog host etc.
I think that actually would be a lot of fun.
I’ve actually thought about trying to have a Blogger’s get together at the Convention. Too few in Phoenix.
One of my good friends who reads my articles on here told me the other day, “If people don’t know you, they read your articles and think you’re crazy. I wish they knew you like I did.” I think there’s a lot of truth to that. Knowing someone puts our articles in context. There’s a breakdown sometimes in my writing because I assume too much. I assume that people know where I’m coming from, because I know what I mean.