Five Questions is where I talk to bloggers about their projects and some of the other things they are doing. I ask {Q}uestions, and hopefully get some {A}nswers!

{Q} What prompted you to establish the Top 100 index?

{A} I started blogging at the beginning of the year, and quickly became interested in the Aussie blogosphere (Aussosphere). I started compiling a list of Aussie blogs that I visited with the view of forming a resource page.

Despite the fact that we have some great sites for exploring Aussie blogs, (aussieblogs.com.au, theaustralianindex.com, gnoos.com.au, and more recently blogs.com.au and bloggerati.com.au) I found it extremely hard to identify and navigate around Australian blogs.

The Australian Index provides a way of sorting Aussie blogs by their Technorati ranking, but it was apparent to me that this method alone wasn’t the ideal way of ranking blogs.

When Craig Harper released his Ultimate Aussie Blogroll, it provided me with a solid starting point, and an impetus to get my own list happening. I’ve always been a “numbers person”, so it was a task that really interested me.

{Q} Just briefly how do you go about compiling, or ranking, blogs in the index?

{A} It all gets a bit technical, but the index looks at Technorati rank, Alexa (global) rank and the Alexa ranking in Australia. It weights (i.e. gives more emphasis to) the traffic a blog gets from Australia and produces an overall index. The formula is (3 x Alexa Australia rank + Alexa global rank + Technorati rank)/5.

The major criticisms / problems with this methodology are that a blog must be claimed in Technorati (so it produces a rank) and Alexa rankings are compiled by the use of an Alexa toolbar (which is downloaded onto individual computers). Many claim that Alexa is not a valid metric.

Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be any other way of gauging traffic to a site, and moreover identifying Australian traffic (and thereby which blogs are popular with Australians).

It also makes it difficult for blogs that are on larger domains like edublogs.org, as they don’t have an individual Alexa rank, so this has to be approximated.

It would be possible to include other metrics – some of the suggestions have been Google Page Rank, number of Google back links, number of subscribers in bloglines, age of a blog and the number of pages a blog has.

However, the difficulty is in automating this process and whether or not it would substantially affect the list.

{Q} How is the various Alexa, and Technorati, data gathered?

{A} Initially, it was a manual task that took the best part of a day to update (i.e. I would have to plug each URL into Technorati and Alexa and copy down the results).

Scott Yang kindly wrote a program which allows me to partly automate the process, in that I copy in the URLs and the program visits the two sites, retrieves the information, calculates the index and reports the variables.

I transfer the index, Australian Alexa rank and Technorati Rank to a spreadsheet, so now the process takes about 3 hours from start to finish (including my weekly update post).

I use Alexa Web Information Services (which costs .15c per 1,000 URLs), and Technorati API (which is free). I have updated the list weekly since April, but may go to fortnightly when (if?) the list becomes more static.

{Q} How do you determine, or go about tracking down, Australian blogs? With so many blogspot, dot com, etc, URLs your work must be cut out for you?!

{A} Agreed, it’s not easy. Basically, I keep a large spreadsheet of URLs, and every time I come across a new Aussie blog I add it.

Blogs like Anthony Dever’s The Local have been instrumental in flagging new blogs, and I discovered a few more from the “noisiest bloggers“. Obviously it’s impractical to test every blog every week, so I have a “watch list” that I check weekly, and others monthly.

Essentially, every new blog has to be checked to ensure it’s “Australian”, usually on the “about” page, or by searching through the content. Mostly, I take the blogs on face value and only check closer if they make the list.

{Q} While some may see the index as a popularity contest, what impact would you like to think the index has on Australian blogging?

{A} I don’t think I was quite prepared for the “fuss” that the list would cause! However, the feedback that I’ve received has been predominantly positive.

This has come from new Aussie bloggers, who are looking to connect with other Aussie bloggers and view the list as a good starting point.

Some also say that getting on the list is a goal they’ve set for themselves. And also from established bloggers, who have said that the list raises awareness about Australian blogging in general.

So, I suppose I’d like to think the list has raised awareness of blogging in Australia, introduced blogs we may not have been aware of, and perhaps made a small contribution towards building up a sense of community amongst Aussie bloggers.

Of course, there are so many terrific Aussie blogs out there that aren’t on the list, which is why the sites above, and the Australian blogs community on Bumpzee, are great for discovery.

Thanks John, for inviting me to be part of your Five Questions series.

Thanks Meg!