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Measuring the Blogosphere... or How Big is It really?
Boštjan Špetič[email protected]
How To Web ConferenceNovember 2010
Dinosaur Big!
Who Might Know?
Blogging Platforms? Professional Researchers? Catalogs? Compete? Google?
1. Official data
Wordpress.com
Wordpress.org
Netlog
Tumblr.com
Livejournal.com
2. Professional Research
Technorati
Nielsen Accenture eMarketer
200M (2008)
33% USA
150M
85M in USA
30M in USA
3. Catalogs
AlltopTechnorati
Blog CatalogFederated MediaBest Of The WebNetworked Blogs
My Blog LogPostrankLoud3rToprankAdageWikio
200k ?
200M
4. Traffic
Can we estimate from traffic? Alexa, Compete, Comscore Hosted platforms are centralized.
Compete Traffic Example
Blogger.com Only dashboards Unique Visitors == bloggers
8.2M
Blogspot.com Only blogs Unique Visitors == readers
60M
Traffic Interpolation
WordPress.com - LiveJournal.com - Tumblr.com - Blogger.com - Typepad.com - Squarespace.com - Netlog.com -
3.700.000
700.000
1.000.000
8.200.000*
1.000.000
1.000.000
100.000
5. Google Blog Search
a) Get random sample of blog posts
b) Heuristics to guess platforms
c) Compare with previous numbers
This way we identify 61% of blogs.
Better for non-hosted platforms.
Works only in English.
Blog Search Sanity Check
WordPress.com - Wordpress.org - LiveJournal.com - Blogger.com - Typepad.com - MovableType.com -
7.50%
28.30%
0.40%
20.20%
2.80%
1.80%
+= 61% (en only)
Bringing it all Together
Official data where available
Compete interpolation for hosted platforms
Google Blog Search interpolation for non-hosted platforms
6. Bonus: Internal Data
Blog search measurement for well known blogging add-on
+
Their own unpublished internal number of active users
=
best estimate for active, monthly, English blogosphere:
10.000.000
Bottom Line
Trust No One! Blogosphere 3x-5x overestimated
Don't take no for an answer Knowing your numbers is competitive advantage
If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist