The ratios mentioned in this post are the ratios between highest and lowest for any given measure, within the 282 “midrange” blogs for which I measured links.

Thus, for example, the link: count (that is, the number returned at the top of the screen) on Yahoo! was 179,000 at its highest within this group of 282, and 5 within its lowest. That’s a ratio of 35800:1.

Since I’d constrained the “midrange” group beforehand, only considering blogs with 19 to 196 total Bloglines subscriptions (roughly a 10:1 ratio), I found it interesting that, for the narrowed 252 blogs, the “plausible reach” ratio was also 10:1.

All of the ratios mentioned here involve Bloglines count or link: results, including the “real” Yahoo! link: result–that is, how many sites it actually shows rather than the wildly higher number it displays above those results.

Here’s the thing: NONE of these ratios will be part of the final article, at least not on a blog-by-blog basis (although the spreadsheet with all the ratios will be available for numbers junkies). What I’m doing now is looking at more interesting metrics based on March-May 2006–number of posts, amount of text and words-per-post, number of comments and comments-per-post, and couple of things I’m still trying out. None of these are “good” or “bad” metrics–but they are, I believe, interesting metrics.

I’d like to say I’m not a numbers junkie (partly true, partly false), but I do try to be a sense-maker. Whether that will work out this time around…well, that’s not for me to say!

My side project–asking for unique visitors and average visits per day during May–may come up with some “non-conclusions,” most probably one that no publicly-available metric really says all that much about how many readers a blog has. Fortunately, in 2006, the growing prevailing wisdom is that “how many readers” isn’t that important for most blogs.

That said, I do look forward to seeing the finished study. There aren’t many people in the world who collect numbers, play with them, and then write thoughtfully about the process–I’m glad one of them is a member of library-land.

However…your total of Bloglines subscriptions is, shall we say, decidedly lower than the cutoff for this year’s study.

Not that I’m lacking what could be considered right-of-center blogs; I’m not (and I don’t plan to apply political labels this year, after being flamed by NBruce last year).

For some reason, Spam Karma 2 flagged your message as spam. So far, I can still check the list…although if the spammers get more active, I’ll give up.

Walter here.

FYI. FREADOM http://4freadom.blogspot.com/

is a library blog, in case the search didn’t grab us.

Which is probably why I’m not too strong on Mc vs. Mac…

[Some time when I'm even older but no grayer, I might tell the story of how I got my first real library automation job, by being able to prove that the five call number systems used at UC Berkeley's Doe Library could be keypunched with simple instructions to student staff, so that the cards would sort and interfile properly...based on observations during three+ years of paging, shelving, and other fun student library flunkie stuff. After professionals, not necessarily librarians, had tried three times and consistently given up. That was in 1968...]

–Th