“Several low-quality blogs found their way to the top of the rankings. Some new blogs with only traffic, quickly found their way to the top.”

I think these statements collate far too many issues and reduce blogging to being part of a clique.

When you say ‘low-quality’ here you imply that those that had been downgraded were ‘high-quality’. But high quality according to who and on the basis of what parameters. Clearly what your article proves, and the responses of your commentators suggest is that ranking is a very relative concept.

In your view then, if a blog is new but has one million readers who do not have blogs to link to then it is of a lower quality than the one that has one hundred readers who link to each and everyone of its posts. That regardless of the fact that the former has original content and the other publishes links. This is as flawed as the tendency to judge the popularity of a blog on the basis of comments.

On the other hand, popularity does not, of necessity speak to the quality of a blog. Quality can only be judged by the consumer, bearing in mind that certain blogs, as other products, are successful because they serve niche markets.

Purpose is also key. I started blogging because I wanted to be a writer. Excerpts from my blog have appeared in a literary journal in Kenya, translated by an Italian journal, republished by a Nigerian magazine and taught in an American university. My blog jump started my commercial writing career and is now also syndicated and paid for by a kenyan internet provider.

I just checked my afrigator rank and i am in the 1,000s or something. Do I consider my blog successful? Of course, because without running ads or anything, my blog serves as my only calling card and has earned me money, career growth, speaking engagements and travel opportunities than anything I ever did before I started blogging.

Rankings are great, but remember that links don’t drive traffic to porn sites, their market knows where to find them. Traffic is great, function is greater.

P.

Seriously, I see your point. A LOT of diasporan Africans are online, proudly flying the African flag and deserve a slice of the Gator pie.The folks at Afrigator are reading.

I wish there is some form of analytical test to use to statistically access the validity and reliability of the possible algorithms that can be constructed for this ranking business. Obviously, the more the variables used the better and more valid the ranking becomes. But without some measure of fidelity testing, it’s like shooting in the dark.

Also, one major limitation of rankings is that is blogger-dependent. It is a fact that bloggers are most likely to read and comment on other blogs. Of course the use of links is also flawed for this reason. A non-blogger can’t link back, but may read, and most likely will not leave any comment. With these limitations, it is often misleading to generalize ranking figures without making clear the various caveats associated with the numbers.

@ David:
I hope you know where I stand regarding celebrating African social media

I feel that it does more harm than good to be have a ranking system that disregard the ‘Diaspora-nature’ of Africans and their diverse audiences.

I was chatting to Stii now and one thing we could look at doing is using comment count on posts as a basis for the algorithm. The problem with using comment count is that it changes all the time so we have to think of a good way to do something like this.

For example, let’s look at this post. Not sure many people have linked directly to this post but with 19 comments already that has to count for something. The point with this post is that it’s spurred a great debate and therefor should be weighted accordingly.

Again, I’m not sure of the feasibility of it but it’s certainly worth exploring. There is 2 more things I’d like to add:

1) Ranking, but its very nature, isn’t black and white – it’s more grey. There isn’t a right way to do it and from our perspective as long as everyone is ranked by the same methods then surely it has to be fair?

2) This is an important ranking and that’s why we want to get it 100% right. We’re not just tracking Afrigator stats, we do track all the stats from all the readers and subscribers from all over the world – it’s just the links that are restricted to Afrigator users. There simply isn’t another type of ranking system like Afrigator’s which is why we feel it is actually authoritative. Sure, it needs more work and more thought but no one is able to rank blogs from Africa.

Afrigator is “a” ranking and not “the” ranking. As different ranking websites have different methods of calculation, it is important to put each and every of them into the proper context.

Amatomu for example, ranks only by traffic and is restricted strictly to South African blogs only. What do we now say about that?

I agree 100% that the best ranking is the impact your blog has on its readers but the more readers you have a positive impact on, the better. All Afrigator is seeking to do, is publicise an idea of how many readers you are having an impact on.

Feel free to reply me again.

Afrigator rankings matter – to some extent. It tells of the authority your blog commands and also helps boost the ego of the blogger(s) behind that blog.

Now, let’s not be in a hurry to deceive ourselves about the global village concept. There is a wide gap between Africa and the rest of the world. To think we are really connected to the world in the way the westerners have in mind is a fantasy. For now, let Africa grow out of the depth of famine, poverty, poor infrastructure etc. Then, perhaps…

Also, even if Africa was really part of any global village, what is the harm in celebrating a regional block within that global village?

My definition: A blog is “African” when it is written by an African, or [at least, substantially] about Africa, or by blogger[s] in Africa.