Blog Monitoring and Measurement
As blogging has been around for a couple years now, there are a number of blog related tools and services available online. They range from the most basic blog statistics, such as page views and number of incoming links, to in-depth, customized research services. Overall the number of blog monitoring tools and services far outweigh what is available for measurement. This is in no small part because there is tremendous controversy over how blogs can, and if they even can, be measured. Currently, it appears that the closest one can get to a somewhat accurate measurement of a blog’s influence is through customized research services, such as those offered by Onalytica. The problem is, since there are no established standards, they devise and utilize their own method, which leaves the results without as much credibility as they could potentially have. A further issue with the few blog measurement tools available is that they often only take into consideration the actual posts, and not the comments on the post. The comments are definitely an integral part of the blog, and are especially important when analyzing the sentiment of the viewers in relation to the blogger and topic. It does not look like there is going to be an arrival at any sort of consensus over blog measurement standards soon. Just as it took many years for search engine technology to evolve before a formula was found that could produce consistently accurate results, I suspect it will be a while before a tool that is able to take into consideration all the factors that affects a blog’s influence is created. One very interesting point that was made in a Onalytica case study1 was that a system such as PageRank would be quite imprecise if used to measure blogs. This is because while PageRank’s system of measuring a site’s general influence takes into account incoming links (among other factors), it does not take into account topic specific influence. Although this is fine for web pages (it is still an inaccuracy though, as the author points out, for example, The New York Times has the same page rank regardless of whether the topic is NYC restaurants, US Politics, or the local birds of the London parks) this is simply not acceptable for blog measurement because a blog’s influence is very closely related to the topic in question. The blog of a Microsoft EVP will obviously carry plenty of influence with regards to technology, computers, etc. but probably close to zero influence in most other topics. Outlined in the following page are a number of the most prominent blog related tools and services available currently:
1
http://www.onalytica.com/MeasuringBloggerInfluence61205.pdf
Onalytica (http://www.onalytica.com/) A UK-based agency that provides tools and consulting services for identifying, measuring, and monitoring who has influence on issues, markets, and brands in the online arena. They use their own quantitative methods in their reporting. The key services they offer are: Stakeholder analysis: “comprehensive analysis of the influence-landscape
surrounding an issue, company or brand.” Monitoring services: “monitoring services monitors and analyses the buzz on the Internet about issues, companies and brands.”
Influence Monitor: custom version of Monitoring Services
Measure Map (http://www.measuremap.com/)* Provides a wide range of statistics for a blog, including information on the number of visitors, links, comments, and posts. In essence, a blog monitoring tool, but does not perform any form of measurement.
*recently acquired by Google
Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com) News aggregator service that allows the user to subscribe to blogs, as well as email groups and websites. Another purely blog monitoring tool. BlogPulse (http://www.blogpulse.com)** A blog search engine that provides a full range of monitoring tools as well as some basic measurement tools.
**service of Nielsen BuzzMetrics
Nielsen BuzzMetrics (http://www.nielsenbuzzmetrics.com/) Customized research and analysis service provider, specializing in Consumer Generated Media including: blogs, message boards and forums, usenet groups, discussions on large portals, opinion/review sites, and feedback/complaint sites.
Resources used: http://andylark.blogs.com/andylark/2006/04/blog_monitoring.html http://www.onalytica.com/MeasuringBloggerInfluence61205.pdf http://open.typepad.com/open/2006/04/blog_measuremen.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4879160.stm http://www.interadvocacy.com/2006/01/blog_measuremen.html http://www.cymfony.com/influence2.pdf http://www.cymfony.com/files/pdf/Tools%20for%20Searching%20Monitoring%20and%20Analyzi ng%20Blogs.pdf http://www.cymfony.com/know_center_blog.asp http://blog-revolution-search-engine-swicki.eurekster.com/ http://www.nielsenbuzzmetrics.com/cgm.asp http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000513.html