For the past three weeks since BlogNetNews.com came out with their first California Blog ranking some of us have been all a flutter here in the OC over the rankings of our local blogs. The first week, Red/County/OCBlog took first place, the second, was Orange Juice, this week it’s Orange Punch on top. Here at TheLiberalOC I’m pleased to report that this week we moved up to Number 3.:smile:
On Thursday Dan Chmielewski on LiberalOC posted rankings from another site What Alexa Says that prompted Art Pedroza to post the site meter traffic numbers for Orange Juice and LiberalOC.
While your numbers are picking up of late (congrats!), here is where we are this week:
Liberal OC: 2,167 visits & 5,446 page views
Orange Juice!: 3,118 visits & 11,066 page viewsNo idea where Red County/OC Blog sits as they don’t share their numbers with the public.
Matt/Jubal at OCBlog responded:
No, we don’t.
But here are our numbers for this week so far:
Visits: 15,889
Page views: 25,990
Impressive numbers no doubt, but the question and answer prompts a few interesting questions. How are those numbers determined? Do they represent unique visits the way Site Meter calculates them, or are they simply a total of every single visit? With numbers that good, why not show them all the time?
The point of these questions is not to push a debate about who’s Blog is bigger. Rather, the fact that Matt at OCBlog and Jon over at Flash Report do not disclose their numbers publicly, or even use an independent and common measure to count these numbers, makes me wonder why not?
What’s the deal guys, why not place the free Site Meter counter on your main page and let anyone find out the numbers, in a format that can be compared, at anytime and on any day? Matt, you were proud to display your BlogNetNews ranking when it was “Number 1”, but took the ranking down when it changed? Orange Juice and LiberalOC have no problem posting our rankings no matter what our numbers are.ÂÂ
So to Matt and Jon I issue this simple challenge…
Show everyone the numbers, every day, all the time. Use a common independent service to calculate those numbers. Heck guys, with the numbers you report, you certainly have nothing to hide. Right?
In the effort to be fair, I also issue the same challenge to the Orange County register to place a Site Meter calculator on you blog pages as well.
Chris:
1) Because it’s our business.
2) We’ve used TypePad’s internal traffic monitor (which is much improved), pay for Web-Stat.com Premium and have recently installed Google Analytics, as well. The latter is free and superior to SiteMeter, in my opinion.
3) We took the ranking blog ad down because it became clear the BNN rankings are a BNN marketing gimmick.
4) if you think I’m lying about our traffic, why don’t you just say so?
Matt,
I don’t think you’re lying about your traffic at all. If LiberalOC had your level of traffic, we would love to advertise that accomplishment. I just think it would be cool to see how you are doing on a regular basis. It would give us another goal to strive for.
As far as the BNN rankings are concerned, I find it odd that you had no problem publicizing your #1 position but once you dropped from #1 it became a marketing gimmick.
At any rate, I think the strong performance of Red County/OCBlog would be enhanced if your numbers were publicized and regularly available.
Chris,
You nailed it! If Blognetnews.com listed Red County #1 every week of course Jubal/Cunningham would keep the link up.
BTW, Jubal/Cunningham screwed up our blog listing on his site today so that it refers readers to Supervisor Janet Nguyen’s campaign site, instead of the Orange Juice!
He must be going through a midlife crisis or something. Or maybe he is reliving his “terrible two’s?” LOL
Congrats by the way on your blog’s continued success. Liberal OC is a daily must read!
As far as the BNN rankings are concerned, I find it odd that you had no problem publicizing your #1 position but once you dropped from #1 it became a marketing gimmick.
As I commented on Art’s blog, I was excited about the BNN ranking when it first came out, and posted about it like everyone else. Even then, my comments were about the OC blogosphere in general, and not a long horn-tooting session about Red County/OC Blog.
Once that wore off, it became apparent it is a marketing gimmick by BNN. They happen to have ready made blogads in different sizes and make it super-easy for us to post them on our blogs. They even had ready-made graphics of the list — complete with one’s individual blog highlighted.
Plus, BNN leaves off some of the genuinely most influential political blogs in the state.
OC Blog has done better in the BNN rankings than anyone other blog, but it’s clear to us this isn’t a credible list. That’s why we dropped it — not the other way around.
I forgot to add: prior to these rankings, ask yourself how often did any blogs post about BNN?
Since they started the rankings, ask yourself how often do the blogs post about BNN?
My hats off to the BNN guys — it was brilliant marketing, and I’m sure they’re getting a lot of traffic from it.
Art,
Act your age, man. Until we’re convinced the BNN ranking is credible, it’s never going up on Red County/OC Blog again — and I don’t care if we’re ranked number 1 again and again. In the meantime, if you want to turn somersault over scoring well in this quasi-credible ranking, be my guest.
And learn to take a joke. I didn’t whine when you posted a Photoshop of my face on a man in a fairy costume. You can dish it out, but you don’t take it very well.
Jubal,
Hey, I thought the link deal was pretty funny – and I said so. But not if you leave it that way.
Honestly, don’t you guys have anything to write about besides me and Supervisor Nguyen?
LOL jubal leave the link that way!
A couple things:
First a correction. Jubal said at 7:11: “They even had ready-made graphics of the list  complete with one’s individual blog highlighted.” This is false. Don’t know where he come up with that and hope he’ll acknowledge the error.
Second: Like every other web site on the planet we want to have more readers. Some sites create buttons that don’t do anything but link. (See drinking liberally on the left.) We try to be different by marketing ourselves with useful services.
There’s a search engine for California political blogs people can host on their sites: http://www.blognetnews.com/California/searchtool.php
There’s a California political blog headlines widget: http://www.blognetnews.com/California/add-bnn.php
And our latest, the blog rankings. All of these have helped us more than double our traffic month over month nearly every month since we launched in Virginia last July. However, for them to do their job, they actually have to provide a useful service.
At 7:11, Jubal makes the allegation: “it’s clear to us this isn’t a credible list.” Then he offers not even one tiny bit of actual evidence. Our credibility is a critical part of our business, if Jubal has any credibility he’ll come up with some evidence.
If his only evidence is that we’re a for-profit site interested in expanding our readership (reading between his lines), that’s an awfully sad argument to come from a conservative site.
Also kind of funny since we’ve been attacked for our list in Virginia and Texas being biased to the right because I was a speech writer for the US Trade Representative during the Bush administration.
In the interest of BNN’s credibility, we’re interested in knowing of any important California blogs about state and local politics and news that we’re missing and any other ideas on how to make our services better.
We’re at work on a major redesign for mid to late July, so now’s the time to speak up. Just email me at editor@blognetnews.com