Thursday, July 5, 2007

The frustration of Second Life Rankings

Google’s pagerank, Google Analytics, Technorati stats, Alexa ranking, AdSense account, SLtopsites, topsites etc... People have enough different rankings to keep up with. Knowing that daily updates are important, bloggers often tend to focus more on quantity than quality. This is why a lot of people have started a daily post which has links to recommended blogs. This gives them an easy way to do a daily update, as well as a possibility to give someone else an inbound link, wishing for someone to return the favor, so they can climb even further up the Technorati ladder.
When it comes to pageranking, I am still waiting for my first ranking, not that it is so important, but 0 is kind of low, don't you think?
I even found a new ranking, where I did not know of: Second Life Blog 40.
It speaks for itself that this is a ranking of the 40 best blogs of SL. The only thing I am wondering about is, on what is this ranking based on? It is good to see that there are some friend bloggers in the ranking (apparently I was too, but am now 53th on the ranking) But who is keeping track of these blogs, is it based on content, because, as far as I know, there are not linked to my blog, is it with google analytics? When somebody knows, I would be happy to know too. One remarkable point: The Official Linden blog is number 40.

So the more views you get, the more chance there is that someone would leave a comment. And that is what it is all about. But to achieve that, we have to wait and to try different things, such as subscribing to SLTopsites. This ranking is obviously not loved by all bloggers, yet it gives an opportunity to advertise your own blog to other members and visitors of this ranking page.
You can of course walk on SL with a tag above your head saying that you are a blogger, but to my opinion, subscribing to a blog as SLtopsites is more efficient. :-)
Personally I try, and I say try, to write a quality post , about something I read or saw...., but that ain't always easy.
I must say that reading a blog with quality content, but a pagerank on 0, has more value than one with a higher pagerank but no quality content.
But than comes the question, do we have the time to do what we should do for having our ranking rise, looking for quality and quantity. Do we even have the time to keep it updated?

I am convinced that if someone really likes to blog, they should not pay attention to those rankings but write quality content, and I am sure the viewers will come and leave their comments, but this could take some time. And time is something we all are short of. So we need to spread the word as soon as possible, for not having the idea that we are blogging for ourselves without someone reading your blog.

So now, we are back to the beginning, keeping track of all possible rankings, and therefor trying to write quality stuff, but thinking in the back of our heads on the rankings.

6 comments:

tiana meriman said...

on my previous blog i use to worry a lot about ranking and comments, like you said i use to post more in quantity then quality and i think thats what made me unhappy about it and ultimately got it deleted (by me)

i think the ranking things can be fun as it pushes people into a friendly competition and thats always fun.

in my new blog i now post for myself, i post the things i need and the things i want to remember. it makes me so much happier even if i will never be number 1, at least i know i'm doing it for the right reasons

Looker Lumet said...

Well Tiana, it makes me happy that you leave me a comment from time to time, as I am trying to write articles who can please everybody, and therefore I am interested in the rankings. But if my articles are quality, that is not up to me to decide.;)
And you are right, the ranking and (no) comments are pushing a blogger to its limits. Maybe one day, I come to the same coclusion as you did, and delete this blog, although I don't hope so, as I like to stay one of the bloggers

Anonymous said...

*coughs*
Blog Top 40 searches syndicated feeds, like blogs, for articles that mention a certain topic and ranks them according to how often they post on that topic. It then tries to filter out spam blogs and other pollutants of the blogosphere.
In no way is popularity a part of these rankings! We aren't looking for the internet's most popular blogs, we're looking for relevant blogs. Let Blog Top 40 be a tool to help find undiscovered sites. Enjoy!

*coughs*

Looker Lumet said...

I know , Vint, I have read that too, but it should be ranked according a topic, in this case second life, and see where the "official linden blog" stands!
I assume they don't write about second life.......

Unknown said...

Great post, Looker, thanks for sharing your thoughts.

BTW - the second life blog to an automated system is just another blog and how many of us truly link to the official blog? It's not in my blog roll. I figure anyone who blogs about SL can figure out blog.secondlife.com on their own, you know? Thus they may have less links around and about than others.

Looker Lumet said...

Yes you are right and thanks for your comment, Dolmere, but than we are talking about how many times your blog is linked, and not about the content. I don't think that is the case. There must be another filter, on which they make their top 40.