When I started the News Dump on this site (click here for more on the News Dump), one thing that I had to do was go through and decide which blogs I wanted to have show up in the News Dump.  I made some quick choices based on blogs that I pay attention to, but I also knew that my criteria for including content could be improved.  So for the past couple of days I have been working on establishing a way to rate the influence of various sites in the Econo/Financial/Business (EFB) blogosphere. 

I figured that “link love” is as good of a ratings system as anything, so I used a simple program that follows links (a web spider), counts the links for each website, and allows you to open the list with MS Excel.

The list contained in this post is the result of this exercise.  My web spider started with some blogrolls, followed the links in the blogrolls to other blogrolls, which eventually resulted in a list of about 3,000 websites.  It then counted the links among and between those websites to arrive at the totals in the list.

1. First, a disclaimer.  This list is influenced by its methodology which no doubt has flaws, but it’s the best that I have.
2. I am just flat out impressed by the influence that Calculated Risk has.  I think you can see in that influence the power that two things have in the blogosphere.  CR is both prolific, which helps to keep readers/followers, and he uses a lot of visuals, which make it easy for people to see the point of the post in a short period.
3. The rankings at the top of the list are more indicative of influence, while the rankings at the bottom of the list are probably just as much about how well someone promotes their blog and seeks out reciprocal linking.  If you have a blog on the list and you think the rating should be higher, it could just be that you aren’t promoting your blog.  If your blog didn’t make the top 63, then promote, promote, promote.
4. There are a lot of great blogs out there.  Think about the sheer volume of the content being created by semi-professional writers.  It’s staggering and impressive.
5. Real estate is sort of a subset of the EFB blogosphere.  There are a few good real estate blogs on the list including: Deal Junkie, Square Feet Blog, Retail Traffic, and some blogs through Globe St.
6. I have intentionally deleted most sites that aren’t blogs.  For instance, Housing Wire is a great site and would have ranked fairly high on the list, but it’s essentially a reporting site.  I have also tried to limit the sites from the professional media.  Paul Krugman’s blog shows up, even though I would call him professional media, but he is also a blogger.  He posts multiple times per day, in blog format, and comments are allowed.

With those remarks, feel free to check out the list.

http://realpropertyalpha.com/2009/04/18/calculated-risk-undisputed-champion-of-the-econofinancialbusiness-blogosphere/

I am also going to make this list a dedicated page on the site, which will be updated from time to time.

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