Thursday, April 30, 2009

Cision's Flawed Top 50 UK Blogs List

Cision have today released a league table of the Top 50 UK blogs from all sectors. While I am delighted to come in at number 2, I have to say the validity of this table is rather undermined by some very strange placings. I'll leave you to work out what they are. There are also some very notable absences. Chris Paul is at number 30 (I kid ye not), yet Tom Harris, LabourHome and Labour List aren't in the list at all. Where's LibDem Voice, Spectator Coffee House etc?

A good PR stunt by Cision, but that's all it is.

34 comments:

Anonymous said...

This seems like a pathetic Labour stunt. Who are Cision, some sort of PR arm of NuLiebour?

If this is the best Brown can do, it's embarrassing.

no longer anonymous said...

So Guido is a technology blog?!

Daily Referendum said...

Bloggerheads at 15? Who knocked this sh*t up?

PRL said...

Yep, some good research there. Must have missed Guido become technology focused

Marky W said...

I see Guido has a focus on 'Technology', which does the list's credibility no favours either...

James Burdett said...

Order-Order is Guido's domain, I wouldn't have classed it as a Technology blog.

ukipwebmaster said...

UKIP launches European Election campaign video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EehZHNvLJuo

Old Holborn said...

Nice to see Tim Ireland and his marketing blog and Guido and his technology blog doing so well.

Idiots. Has Draper started a new job there?

I use the wikio ratings

Anonymous said...

Congratulation Iain for second spot.

"There are also some very notable absences"

Yeh your right, mine, well spotted lol

Bird said...

Guido's at No5.
They think he writes about technology.

Martin said...

Guido is a Technology focussed blog? Has anyone told him?

lilith said...

Of course it's a wind up. They have order-order.com as a technology blog.

Troushers said...

Physician: Heal Thyself!

Anonymous said...

Yes - Shocking!

Hamish said...

Iain, are you trying to win a competition for the most impenetrable headline?
Outside the Westminster village, who knows who Cision is/are?
And which of the words in your headline are verbs, nouns or adjectives?
If you want to win the Orwell prize next year, you need to be articulate not just loquacious.

Unsworth said...

No, it's a bad PR stunt.

Bearded Socialist said...

With no mention of the Bearded Socialist, I feel it is clearly a scam.
Honestly, no Bearded Socialist make Bearded Socialist something something

IanVisits said...

It's quite a bizarre list, and I would be interested as to what their definition of "a blog" actually is.

B3TA may be a brilliant website, but I cannot think of any dictionary which has a definition which would permit it to be called a blog.

I am also uncomfortable having websites such as gizmodo listed, who are more akin to commercial news operations than blogs in the classic sense.

Pete Moore said...

Labour List?

You must be joking.

It's dreadful.

Morus said...

More transparent than BPIX but with a methodology that would even make ComRes blush.

What does 'Top' mean? They've not really answered this. Most popular? Most readers? Most influential? Most time spent reading? Highest reader*post score?

The methodology says what they included in the calculation, but not what they wanted to measure.

Complete and utter nonsense numbers, and not that good as a PR stunt either.

Unknown said...

they're responding to a need from PR people to have an 'off the shelf' list of blogs to send press releases to as opposed to genuinely trying to map networks of influence and look for ways to participate

Neil said...

One of the problems with the Lib Dem love-bombing strategy is that it may sound good in theory at Westminster, but on the streets around the country it is very different.

Anybody who has been involved in any sort of campaign involving the Lib Dems will have stories about their tricks. One of my favourites is informing voters their councillor didn't turn up at an important meeting...without mentioned said councillor had died 12 hours before.

And it follow that there are still Conservatives about, though I've no idea about the number, who would lend their vote to Labour if the only alternative was a Lib Dem being elected.

Thats News said...

You are there. Mine isn't. Only to be expected!

Anonymous said...

Chris Paul is far more entertaining than the dreary Lib Dem voice. No one else tears a strip off the Lib Dems with quite the same panache and good humour.

Just because he's not a big fan of yours, Iain. Give the man some credit. And he's not a West Ham fan either. Not many of them in Manchester. Thank God.

Plato said...

Bloggerheads at 15 in the Marketing category.

Eh?

*cue incoming*

Chris Paul said...

Anonymous 2:30 PM: I'll have you know that I'm a major fan of Iain Dale's Diary. Clearly he needs to be rebutted in a good humoured way for at least some of his wonky mutterings, but Iain is the Pope of Bloggery and must be respected at all times. Could do with playing down his obsession with yours truly.

Hilarious that Iain should be dissing the methodology of somebody else's polls, lists or surveys. He's probably more annoyed that Bloggerheads is at 15 but doesn't like to give Manic the Oxygen of publicity.

Shamik Das said...

Guido only at number five, T** I******'s Marketing Blog at 15!

Who exactly are Cision, and which numpty compiled this list?!

ps. Congrats to Iain and Chris Paul!

Paul Miller said...

Hello all, Paul from Cision here.

Thanks for taking a look at our list, Iain, and thanks, all, for the feedback.

A couple of specific points:

Morus, as you say, our first step was to combine traffic with a proxy for search visibility. While we'd like the results to reflect "influence", we recognise we've taken only a small step in that direction, and that there's a long, long way to go.

Mark, "off the shelf" blog lists really are the last thing we want to produce - we're pretty explicit about that in the press release.

And IanVisits, you should know we agonised about the classification of b3ta too. Should have agonised a bit more over the classification of Guido...

Jonathan Calder said...

Having studied the list and found that I am not in it, I agree with you that it is nothing but a PR stunt.

Old Holborn said...

Paul Miller

What are your views on caravanning? Or witch craft in the Niger Delta? Or Toenails Robinson?

"Morus, as you say, our first step was to combine traffic with a proxy for search visibility. While we'd like the results to reflect "influence", we recognise we've taken only a small step in that direction, and that there's a long, long way to go."

What on earth does that mean? You've discovered a new way to measure blogs? No you haven't you cock. Go back to the drawing board or simply copy the real list from Wikio

Morus said...

Paul Miller

Appreciate the response in person.

I think a conspicuous understanding of 'top' is useful.

Most-popular, ie traffic-wise, there are separate measures that should be reflected. How many people reading, how many times does the average reader come back, how long do they spend reading it. Some merged reader*seconds/visit might manage that.

Influence is a completely different beast - I'm not sure much is gained by mixing a measure of influence with one of traffic. Things are influential if they are talked about on other blogs *if those blogs are influential* - as I understand it this is the path Wikio and Technorati follow, though I'm far from convinced by those either. MSM mentions suggest influence, but without beating about the bush, influence comes from being read by influential people. I'm not sure that is so easy to measure.

I don't agree with measuring number of posts as a factor on any measure. Some posters post once article a day, some post tens of short posts a day, some post only a couple of pieces a week, but they a massive treatises. I'm not sure volume is an indication of influence or popularity - it has an effect on those two, but is not a useful measure of them.

I'm also not convinced that comparing categories of blogs is useful - any more than the comparative sales figures of jeeps v smoothies.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Good luck with wherever you take it next.

Matt Wardman said...

Paul

Good to see you responding.

You also need to agonise about the classification of Open Democracy, which is a thinktank site with a stable of blogs, and All About Symbian which I can't classify.

Rgds

Matt Wardman

Matt Wardman said...

And you need Slugger O Toole on there.

Chris Paul said...

There is now a text only list of the top 50 at my blog. the methodology appears to be better than say, just asking people to self-select to submit lists of favourites.

Quantitative not qualitative. I was surprised too. But hey ho, you win some you lose a lot. The 49th link at Cision was wrong btw. I've caught that too.

Glad to be of service.