Having read weblogs for awhile now (starting a few months prior to 9/11/2001), and having played with this site for a couple of weeks, I've been pondering the effect of "blogrolling." More specifically, I wondered whether sending outgoing links generally results in incoming links. An ideal test of this hypothesis would require obtaining a complete (or at least random) sample of blogs and counting their incoming and outgoing links. I've no time for that.
Instead, procrastinating, I copied the latest iteration of the Myelin blogging ecosystem ("MBE"), parsed the data, and removed the obvious non-blogs and duplicate entries. The MBE is a ranking of the 500ish most-linked-to and the 500ish most-linking sites identified. Of these joint 500s, 180 weblogs feature in both categories (i.e., are both popular and generous). Obviously, these sites are going to have both more incoming links and more outgoing links than the average weblog, but it's not obvious to me that those with relatively more outgoing links will also have relatively more incoming links (i.e., the more generous of these 180 will also be the more popular).
(New Poll Shows Correlation Is Causation.)
They are. For each additional 10 outgoing links in their blogrolls, these sites receive an average of 4 more incoming links than their peers (a result statistically significant at the 98 percent level).
For what it's worth, this analysis would predict 134 incoming links to this young site. Obviously, I'm not in MBE territory yet. Or it may just reflect a lack of quality.
Update: The number of sites in both MBE categories is 177, not 180. I missed a few duplicates.
Posted by oscarjr at January 30, 2003 12:56 AM | TrackBackyou need to factor in the age of the blog, as well. Those lists tend to grow over time.
Posted by: bigwig at 04:07 PMAs long as you don't factor in the age of the blogger. I'm already depressed.
Posted by: CGHill at 04:07 PMI agree that blog age is a huge variable. My guess is that blogrolling a huge number of sites--especially popular sites--won't significantly increase your traffic/reciprocal links. Glenn Reynolds isn't going to add you to his blogroll just because you've blogrolled him and I can't see how your having linked Glenn would inspire someone else to link you. (Gee! He reads InstaPundit! How cool is that!) Now, blogrolling lesser bloggers (say, OTB) will generate more interest, since many will at least reciproll you if they discover the link.
Posted by: James Joyner at 10:07 AMI know that reciprocal linking do increase the traffic. You have a reciprocal link here: http://www.4myown.biz/_blogs.html
Posted by: reciprocal links directory at 01:24 AM