Blog chest puffing
Inside blogging baseball, skip if this crap bores you.
Bill Hobbs notes that Business Tennessee did a bit on bloggers. I’ve not read it because I’m not giving them any of my info and bugmenot doesn’t have log in. If someone has a copy, post it comments. It does show that they don’t get blogging if they don’t make their stuff available to all. Bill says:
You’re probably a tad confused as you just read that this is the most-read political blog in Tennessee, except for Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit, and yet you find it hasn’t been updated since Jan. 10. The truth is, Business Tennessee started working on that cover story back when this blog was active, and when I shut it down I didn’t know how long the hiatus would be. I still don’t.
Here’s wishing Bill returns to blogging. However, Bill’s blog has never been the most-read political blog in Tennessee, except for Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit. Last I recall checking when Bill was blogging and he’d received a big ol’ spike from announcing he quit blogging, it was Donald Sensing, then Les Jones, then (ahem) me, then Lean Left and then Bill Hobbs. And that was with a big ol’ spike for quitting. Prior to that, it was probably South Knox Bubba neck in neck with Sensing. This isn’t to get in a dick-measuring contest but we bloggers loves us some fact-checking. And you’d have thought Bill would have fact checked their asses.
Of course, stuff has changed since then. Sensing has quit. Bubba’s gone and is now R. Neal. Google decided to scrub my site, which is not an issue for me in terms of actual readership but an issue in terms of ad revenue and sitemeter hits. Strangely, my Google rank stayed at 6 and I am in their database. Just not showing up for any searches. That cost me about 800 visits per day and roughly halved sitemeter counts. It only really annoys me due to lost ad revenues.
Update: In comments, Bill says:
What the magazine actually said was, “Hobbs has the biggest blog readership in the state political sphere.”
Now that, I believe to be true. He also links to the story.
March 10th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
Prior to shutting it down, my site averaged 30,000 unique visitors per month for a solid 2 years. Don’t know how that compares to the others, just a factoid for you.
It very hard to measure the biggest blog in any niche, because so few blogs stick within a niche. What the magazine actually said was, “Hobbs has the biggest blog readership in the state political sphere.”
If by that they meant that, among blogs that focused primarily on state politics, that would tend to rule out blogs like Sensing’s and SKB’s, which tended to focus on national issues more than Tennessee issues. I haven’t looked at Say Uncle or Les Jones in a long time or Lean Left much at all, so I don’t know if their focus is primarily Tennessee politics/policy. Mine was, and the Business Tennessee article was focused on that aspect of my blog.
So, was I the most-read Tennessee politics-focused blog? I don’t know.
The rest of their sidebar on me was right, though.
The mag’s main story was on Glenn Reynolds. It’s a very good read. The sidebars are here: http://www.billhobbs.com/businesstnbloggerstory.pdf
March 10th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
Thanks for the info. That criteria would also rule out instapundit. Will read it once it downloads.
March 10th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
FYI, “factoid” means a “fact” that is generally assumed to be true but isn’t. Heh. Pedantically yours…
March 10th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
Though my overall numbers are small potatoes to you guys I wanted to comment that I get very few people entering my site via my blog. Most come in through my old fashioned static pages and then with internal links they are directed to my blog.
Since the old fashioned static pages have been around alot longer than my blog, the search engines rank them higher.
So my Google blog is not even ranked (no promotion at all), but I get several hundred people a day coming from search engines to those static pages. So they may not show up in any blog rankings, but these are people coming to my site.
I run a commercial free, non-political blog, I just wanted to share a thought, leave me as anon.
and thanks for a great blog Uncle 🙂