Top 100 Irish blogs

Michele has thoughtfully set up the latest Irish blogs initiative irishblogs.info. As detailed in the growing FAQ, the idea this time is a list of the most popular Irish blogs.

This takes the format of a hot 100 chart, with the rankings based on blog traffic data, collected via placing a rather attractive turquoise button icon on your blog (as illustrated on the right hand side of mine under the Supporting heading). People can also vote for and rate your blog, but this does not determine the chart rankings. So it’s not one of those rigged banner ad-laden top site list things.

I think this is a great idea so many thanks Michele for setting it up. My favourite feature is not actually the chart, but the way blogs are broken down by category. Although group blogs, news blogs and the heavyweights may dominate the top chart positions, you can display blogs by category too. So if someone is interested in more personal Irish blogs or Irish business blogs, they can easily find those. I think this is a great development. Although Planet of the Blogs and Irishblogs.ie are doing great work as aggregators, it can be daunting faced with just a list of hundreds of names of Irish blogs to go on!

Of course, a top 100 Irish blogs list is bound to bring out the competitive spirit in Irish bloggers. I predict it will be about a week before a big scrap breaks out with several high profile Irish bloggers disputing the top positions, quoting from their own comprehensive web statistics reports which they pore over hourly. Bring it on! :)

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  4. thanks for commenting graeme – i was not aware of your blog and i always like finding new ones :)

    what’s so wrong with a list of popular irish blogs young irelander? for those new to irish blogs, it’s a great way to get into them instead of sticking a pin in a list of 500 of them. and for irish bloggers, it’s very interesting to know who the movers and shakers are :) and what’s so bad about adding a link to your blog? you already do it for sitemeter and many of us do it for flickr / blogroll integration etc…

    as for you anthony, come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough ;p

  5. Janine,

    What is the point of it? To quote the Babblogue blog, “I wonder if the winner gets a tiara and a bouquet?”

    It won’t give us a definitive number one blog as people are required to add a link to the thing to be counted.

    Furthermore, I feel it is wrong to associate alot of visitors with great blog content. I could get more visitors than another blog but that doesn’t mean I have better written content.

    Ultimately I think it’s just a great big backslapping contest. Count me out!

  6. young irelander, i never said that this list showcases the best irish blogs!

    however, i think it definitely has a place and is a worthy initiative. music charts may not represent the best songs, but “best” is a very subjective notion. they represent the songs which people bought or downloaded the most and that cannot be argued with. i think that a list of the most visited irish blogs is interesting and valuable.

    furthermore, i said my favourite aspect of this site was the categorisation of irish blogs – a cooncept which i have not seen previously on other irish blog resources.

    sure, blogger vanity comes into it as well but sure there’s no harm in that :) it’s all a bit of fun! and nobody is forced to join in – you can stand on the moral high ground forever if you want :p

  7. janine

    “they represent the songs which people bought or downloaded the most and that cannot be argued with”

    But music charts aren’t exclusive like this Irish chart which requires blogs to sign up. That can’t be argued with.

    “i think that a list of the most visited irish blogs is interesting and valuable.”

    It’s a false representation of the most visited Irish blogs though. Look at a site like Slugger O’Toole which probably gets well over a 1000 hits a day, if it doesn’t sign up then the list is a farce!

    “and nobody is forced to join in – you can stand on the moral high ground forever if you want :p”

    Hey, standing on the moral high ground is what I do best.;)

  8. young irelander,
    irishblogs.info isn’t exclusive – any irish blogs can join!
    at the moment it has only just started so the list is nonsense – hence why my humble blog is featuring! :) but give it a few weeks, when the heavyweights join up, and i think it will be a valuable resource. and if they don’t sign up, it’s because they don’t want to be involved – each to their own.

    i really can’t understand your gripe about needing to sign up. to be honest, i would be worried if you didn’t need to sign up. since the *only* way of tracking all the blogs involved is to insert the same tracking code on them, this is a hypothetical argument. but i would not be happy if a top 100 blogs chart *automatically* included all blogs and tracked them and made their traffic details public and included them in the chart without their owners’ permission! i think it’s far more sensible that people opt in rather than have to opt out…

  9. I’d have to side with UI on this. It should be “Top 100 Irish Blogs” … “excluding equally good if not better Irish blogs which decide not to take part” IMHO.

  10. not quite as catchy a title there maca! :)
    but fair point and maybe an asterisk will be added in due course stating that terms and conditions apply!

    but this kind of top sites concept has been around a fair while, seldom as well executed as this – normally it’s a big “vote for me” fest with banner ads at every turn. however, they never include *all* sites from the genre – it’s just a voluntary thing, so the list is a subset and that’s pretty clear.

    like i said, i would be far more concerned if there was some sinister force out there that could automatically sniff out any irish blogs on the www and track their traffic and reveal all at irishblogs.info :p

  11. I think it’s a great idea; it gives get feedback from the stats and gives an inclination as to the amount of visitors each Irish blogger gets.

    I must say I’m enjoying my tussle for 2nd spot with Janine, well until the big boys come :)

  14. good to know i’m not alone liam! and sure even when we are in mid division, we can still enjoy the tussle :) i think you will win out in the end though – i mean your blog actually has a point! :)

    ps your blog looks perfect in firefox to me 1024×768

  15. I have to say this is great stuff! As the business manager at Evo-Dev (we made evoTopsites), its great to see people taking the blogtopsites.com project (the first of now almost a dozen blogging topsites using evoTopsites) and applying it to their niche areas. Looking forward to seeing it grow, and we feedback on what could make the topsite software itself better and easier to use!