Religion tops Times blogs
Monday
Oct 30, 2006
Ruth Gledhill, religion corespondent of The Times, is the paper’s top blogger. Her Articles of Faith blog is well ahead of any of the others from The Times and The Sunday Times published on the papers’ website, according to the Technorati rankings. Gledhill has 772 links from 160 blogs. At the other end of the scale five have no links from other blogs.
Recently, I questioned the purpose of many newspaper blogs, wondering whether they were the latest must-have accessory for editors. A check through the Technorati rankings, unsatisfactory as they are in some ways, seems to confirm the view that some bring little benefit to their papers.
After Gledhill comes columnist David Aaronovitch with 162 links from 90 blogs. He is closely followed by the group news blog. By the nature of their subjects some blogs will have larger potential audiences than others but it is difficult to see a pattern in The Times blogs.
While Technorati records the total number of links and how many other blogs link, it is the second figure which accounts for the ranking, according to an explanation on their site. The figures are from the previous 180 days. They sometimes seem to change erratically and, in my experience do not always pick up links. The list of Times blogs is below, but first a personal disclosure: Wordblog this afternoon had a ranking of 66,872 with 264 links from 40 blogs. When I revived it in the middle of June it was at the bottom of the pile, somewhere in the 1,600,000s.
Times Blogs
1 Ruth Gledhill — Rank: 15,049 (773 links from 160 blogs)
2 David Aaronovitch — Rank: 28,569 (162 links from 90 blogs)
3 News (Group blog) — Rank: 29,614 (202 links from 87 blogs)
4 Asia Exile (Richard Lloyd Parry) — Rank: 37,040 (178 links from 70 blogs)
5 Comment Central (Daniel Finkelstein) — Rank: 39,301 (284 links from 66 blogs)
5 Charles Bremner — Rank: 40,567 (123 links from 64 blogs)
7 Mousetrap Technology (group blog) — Rank: 45,705 (96 links from 57 blogs)
8 Law (group blog) — Rank: 52,557 (111 links from 50 blogs)
9 So LA (Chris Ayres) — Rank: 66,872 (76 links from 40 blogs)
10 Mick Smith — Rank: 70,641 (172 links from 38 blogs)
11 Enterprise (group blog) — Rank: 72,655 (96 links from 37 blogs)
12 A Don’s Life (Mary Beard) — Rank: 74,752 (75 links from 36 blogs)
=13 Music Log (group blog) — Rank: 79,638 (53 links from 34 blogs)
=13 Peter Stothard — Rank: 79,638 (73 links from 34 blogs)
15 Africa (Jonathan Clayton) — Rank: 102,788 (59 links from 27 blogs)
16 Gerard Baker — Rank: 111,889 (43 links from 25 blogs)
17 Sinofile (Jane Macartney) — Rank: 116,916 (73 links from 24 blogs)
18 Eco Worrier (Anna Shepard) — Rank: 122,662 (40 links from 23 blogs)
19 Gardening (Jane Owen) — Rank: 128,952 (25 links from 22 blogs)
20 Asia’s Century (Leo Lewis) — Rank: 245,389 (35 links from 12 blogs)
=21 Cassandra (Ariel Leve) — Rank: 364,820 (11 links from 8 blogs)
=21 Overseas Property (Peter Conradi) — Rank: 364,820 (17 links from 8 blogs)
=21 People (group blog) — Rank: 364,820 (20 links from 8 blogs)
=21 Gay Global (James Collard) — Rank: 364,820 (9 links from 8 blogs)
25 Pink Mum (Anon) — Rank: 475,893 (6 links from 6 blogs)
26 Beyond Wall Street (James Doran) — Rank: 678,225 (4 links from 4 blogs)
=27 Isn’t She Talking Yet? (India Knight) Rank: 858,703 (5 links from 3 blogs)
=27 Student (Anon) — Rank: 858,703 (3 links from 3 blogs)
=29 East of Eden (Stephen Farrell) — Rank: 1,155,566 (6 links from 2 blogs)
=29 Irwin Stelzer — Rank: 1,155,566 (1 link from 1 blog)
=31 Dollar Signs (Dominic Rushe) — Rank: 1,155,566 (2 links from 2 blogs)
=31 Kabul Times (Tim Albone) — Rank: 1,155,566 (1 link from 1 blog)
33 Northern Times (Russell Jenkins) — Rank: 1,738,471 (No blogs link here)
=34 Popcorn (John Harlow) — Rank: 1,738,471 (No blogs link here)
=34 Travel Log (group blog) — Rank: 1,738,471 (No blogs link here)
=34 Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs (Christina Lamb) — Rank: 1,738,471 (No blogs link here)
=34 Lord Rees-Mogg — Rank: 1,738,471 (No blogs link here)
Not Classified Money (group blog) — Not found on Technorati
NC Books Group (Alyson Rudd) Not found on Technorati but also not really a blog
NC Surf Nation (Alex Wade) — Not found on Technorati
NC UN Eyes Only (James Bone) — Not found on Technorati
Comments
Tom Whitwell
November 2nd, 2006 at 12:43 pm
Thanks for this. I wish I’d known you were doing this research before embarked on the same project myself (also looking at our internal audience figures) a couple of weeks ago. Technorati can be irritatingly slow…
Ruth’s blog is a wonderful phenomenon. Last week I found myself reading a post there which - when you included the many erudite comments - ran to over 16,000 words.
Tom (Online Communities Editor, The Times)
Ruth Gledhill
November 2nd, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Thank you for this report. I spend hours of my own time doing the blog, and sometimes end up working until 2am or 3am, it is such an addictive medium. I really love doing it so don’t resent the time. But I just might ask for a pay rise on the back of your write-up!
Regards, Ruth