This post is 100% word-for-word taken from Lenore, but I don't think she'll mind. (Lenore, if you do, I will send you a batch of chocolate chip cookies - do you think they'll mail overseas?)
This week I happened upon a post that talked about what publishers look for when sending out review copies to book bloggers. You can read the entire post at The Book Publicity Blog, but what stood out most to me is that publicity people look at your technorati authority rating. This shows how many technorati registered blogs linked to your content over the past 6 months and shows how relatively popular your blog is. Trouble is, if mostly unregistered blogs link to you, your rating will be low despite how popular you might really be. I have a feeling a lot of you out there with YA blogs are not registered, so why not support the YA blogging community not just by linking to other blogs but also by making your links count? Register your blog at http://www.technorati.com/. It's been awhile since I did it, but it must have been fairly simply since I managed to register successfully.
P.S. It is free!
The funny thing about the blogoland is that people are always trying to figure out authoritiative ways of ranking people so you can… I don’t know, compare your status with other blogopeople? Technorati does this with some success mainly because they are married to WordPress in such a tight way that they get a lot of data, and also because people seem to go along with or take stock in what they say. When PubSub was coming out with its link rankings it was an interesting attempt to quantify something we could feel and not quite see, and yet the numbers didn’t seem to really mean anything, or map on to anything with any degree of predictability. Predictability is when you the blogger think “If I link to this story about a book banning over the work scrotum, that is probably going to attract a lot of inbound links which might affect my popularity ratings in places like Technorati.” We may be considered link whores if we do this deliberately, but we’d be a little clueless if we didn’t understand how these things work.
All that is my lead-in to mentioning that this blog is #1 on a list of ranked blogs — Top 25 Librarian Bloggers (By the Numbers). To my mind this is mostly saying “Jessamyn’s blog has been around the longest” which is mostly true. Jenny had a blog-type site before The Shifted Librarian, but it’s not around now. What’s Gnu was the first library-oriented blog I read but it’s only available now at the Internet Archive. People I read regularly — Meredith, Michael, Stephen — didn’t make the list due to some quirks in the decisions OEDB made on who would be included. A few other people who did make the list ponder about it: Walt, Ryan, Sarah, Von, Jason and, of course, Anonymous.
A few other interesting points. Google’s Librarian Central is on the list despite having a Technorati rank of zero. Somehow they have a Google page rank of seven, how about that? The top 25 were picked from a field of 55 which seems a little sparse. Meredith’s recently posted survey results indicate there are hundreds of library and librarian bloggers. With the exception of the Law Librarian blog the rest of the top ten are what I consider “old timers” (though I may be wrong about the Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette which I was sure had been delighting me much longer than just two years) which supports what I asserted earlier, that a lot of page rank and Technorati rank and DMOZ inclusion (seriously, DMOZ?) have to do with longevity.
In any case, it’s always nice to have an excuse to read more librarian blogs that I might not see in my daily travels. Also, I should mention that today is my birthday. So, if you’re so inclined, tell me in the comments what your blog or website is #1 in… whatever the heck it is. It will amuse me, spread the link love around, and give everyone a little more to read. We could all use more to read.
tagless!
Three months and ten days ago, Sara Walker emailed me to tell me about the Book Lust Wiki, a companion community to Nancy Pearl’s website Book Lust.
“How cool is that?” I thought, and then promptly went on with my day. I may have told y’all about it, burying its link between newspaper articles and links to other blog entries discussing the gossip of the day, or I may not. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember. But as I was working on whittling down my email box today, I once again came across Sara’s email. “Perhaps I should check this out.”
This time I actually did—hey, that’s what my newly rediscovered follow-through is for—and wow, did I have a good time. For example, I created a Bookseller Blog page (as it was sorely needed) and added myself, the Written Nerd, Bookdwarf and Little Willow (all of whom may want to edit their information), but I know that I’m missing many, many people. Unfortunately I don’t have the time or the energy to add all of my sidebar links to the appropriate places, nor do I think of myself as the official authority on all these categories, which is where you come in.
Booksellers, go add yourself using the Easy Edit key.
Librarians, spread your wisdom and talented organizational skills to the world by linking yourself and others (there’s another designation for straight library websites), so that all may know your shushing power.
Readers, add blogs that I have no clue about, and your own to immortalize your authority on all things paginated.
The rest of you (because I’m sure I’ve missed some niche), go find out what category you/someone else belong(s) in (look at the scrolling side bar on the left hand side of the page)—or, should your designation be lacking, create one by following the instructions on this page—and add another link to increase your/someone else’s Technorati numbers and love.
(‘Cause it is all about the book love, baby. Oooh, it makes my pages flutter.)
The Book Lust Wiki needs your help to build its links, and it is your job—nay, your duty as a book lover—to provide the information that you have collected through your various blog hopping to make this the best Book Blog Wiki it can possibly be! Come, better yourself and others through the wisdom of crowds! James Surowiecki, Dan Tapscott and Anthony Williams would be so proud of you.
Be warned: the procrastination that lies there in is seductive, but as it is a good cause, I can honestly say that it is better for you than playing Solitaire or Snood (evil, evil, time-squandering game!).
Ha ha! Chocolate chip cookies sound good about now. No really, thanks for helping get the word out.
I totally agree with both of you. I always wonder why bloggers who know these things never do it for their fellow bloggers. Like even if you are someone who has ads, the only way to make money is if someone clicks on it. It takes a few seconds and then hit the back arrow and you help that person. I try and do it as much as possible when I see people have ads because that's how it ads up....and guess what I have in 5 months only about 6 clicks! How can that be? I don't do it for money, but it doesn't hurt to offset some mailing costs, etc. Perhaps people don't know these things. I think as a blogging community, all, not just YA but include everyone that if you have the time to to it,help people out. The Technorati is especially important!
By the way, the pun of "how it ads up" really is a spelling error but now that I see it, I like it! Aerin, how do you get your comments numbered? I have tried the way they say to do it and it doesn't work. Do you have a different way than the simple way all helpers have given me? Just wondered. Thank you!
I'm on Technorati ~ & even if I'm not actually "there" very often, I do try to find the blogs I follow, and fav them there... All the little things count, ykwim?