Information on the ranking algorithm used in the Top 100 blogs list.

At the 14th March 2008 update of the list you might have noticed a large change in the rankings for some sites, big falls and big rises in the rankings.

Basically I’ve experimented with various different ways of ranking the blogs, always trying to get the fairest results, and on 14th March I changed the system again, this time I hope for the last time.

Previously Google Page Rank had almost no influence on the scores, for two reasons

• it’s not really a very useful way of measuring a site
• for mathematical reasons it can have too big an influence on the scores

But I decided to increase its share in the algorithm and now if your Page Rank is quite low, like 0, 1, 2, or even 3, it will be very difficult for your blog to rank highly, unless your’e Dian Sastrowardoyo.

So, for the algorithm, Page Rank still has the lowest share in determining the rankings (but for mathematical reasons it is still very important), and the other five factors are about equal.

Update 29th March

Page Rank influence turned down slightly (done retrospectively to update the 14th March results), but is still higher than it was pre-14th March. RSS Subscribers influence turned slightly up.

4th April

Not an update, just a minor algorithm change, Del.icio.us influence turned down a little.

1st May

Alexa Traffic Rank became much more influential in the rankings this time.
Next update in early June.

June 1st

Incredibly smooth update! Del.ciou.us even stopped banning my IP!

July 1st

Talked too soon, big mess this time, but eventually finished ok. I’m trying to reduce the influence of Backlinks combined with Technorati rank, there are some sites that have got tons of network type links, and it isn’t really fair. There are also a couple of sites that are spamming Technorati hard, and will have to be removed next update, or earlier.