How to Rank CAD Blogs

we are just starting to recognize that we are all part of an online community

Last Saturday afternoon, intrigued by Guy Kawasaki post, I put together a short list of CAD blogs for my own pleasure and interest. It was a simple list with all CAD blogs I read sorted by Technorati ranking. I thought it was a good idea to share it online with others. Soon after that I added a short explanation to it and I posted both on this blog. Surprisingly enough, in just a few hours I saw several of the bloggers mentioned in the list had come to the Novedge blog and left comments. Maybe the list "struck a nerve" in the online CAD community, to use Alex Neihaus (3D Mojo) words. My impression is that we are just starting to recognize that we are all part of an online community.

All of the comments are very interesting and useful. Thank you all! I would like to answer everybody who left a comment with a personal message, but I believe it's better to answer with a post on this blog in order to keep the dialog public and open. Let me share some with you some information and ideas:

• I created the list as a tool to explore and understand the CAD blogger community, not to promote or demote anybody. I read and enjoy all the blogs in the list and over the last two days, thanks to your comments, I added a few more blogs to my Google Reader.
• I chose the Technorati ranking not because it's the absolute measurement of a blog popularity, but because it's public, easy to check, and reasonable. I could have chosen Alexa ranking, Google PageRank, or something else. When you reduce such a complex concept as blog popularity to a number, some oversimplification is inevitable. We all know that slightly different sets of parameters can lead to widely different results. But I'm not playing with numbers to promote CAD system X against CAD system Y (system X is where I make the extra money). I'm just a blogger sharing a simple list.
• After a few changes I stopped updating the list with new information from the comments because the Technorati ranking was already changing. The list is a snapshot, imperfect and partial, while the ranking is something very fluid. I'm going to take a new snapshot every few weeks and publish it on this Novedge blog. This way I will also be able to include more blogs and more data. I'm going to ask other bloggers for some "secret" info like page-views and number of RSS subscribers. If everybody is willing to collaborate we could really make an interesting list. Are you OK with sharing this information with the blog community?
• The list should include all of the blogs from and for the CAD online community. In spite of having her dog's pictures posted, Lynn Allen is (mostly) talking about CAD for CAD users. The same holds true for many other blogs that include non-CAD posts. It's a blog tradition to blur the line between strictly professional topics and personal life, experiences, and opinions.
• The distinction I find more challenging is the one between independent and non independent blogs. (Thanks Ralph for reminding us of the distinction.) Everybody agrees that Ralph Grabowski is an independent blogger (to me, The Independent CAD Blogger). On the other hand, Lynn Allen's blog is obviously a corporate non-independent blog. What about Chris Kelley's blog? And, not last, what about the Novedge blog? Can a reseller like Novedge, with more than 60 brands, run a really independent blog? (Personally I believe the answer is Yes.) What should be the rules for calling a blog independent? When the author personally pays the blog bills, is his/her blog independent? What about the author's affiliation? Or is the content of the blog what makes the difference? I would love to hear your opinions on this.

Franco Folini

Comments

[Andy Thomson]

A CAD (or BIM) blog is independent if, like in the preambles in movies about how the views of the directors/actors do not represent those of the studio, etc.

If it is prepared to bare, warts and all, the application(s) it writes about...I picked the URL name for my blog because Graphisfot didn't have a claim on the domain (http://archicad.ca) - I asked their permission but nobody answered. While I would say that ACE is a 'pro' Archicad blog, I am trying to advance BIM workflows, and ArchiCad is what I personally know best. Frankly, I think Revit and Microstation users ought to do the same, as I'd like to read about similar problems they encounter...

[Jimmy Bergmark]

According to http://www.feedburner.com/ Site Stats my JTB World blog have on January 10
505 subscribers to my feed
555 visitors (89.1% new)
22.8% came directly
55.4% from searches
21.8% from other sites
This is interesting. It tells that many finds the way through Google and the like in search for something. This is not reflected by Technorati. Technorati ranking is all about how much other bloggers link to you and not how much it is read, etc.
But this is not an exact science. Compare on the same day the result from Google Analytics.
Visits: 615
Pageviews: 908
Returning visitors: 23.09%
Visits with Google as source: 51.22%
Result is affected by for example if the users accept cookies and don't clear them often. Another thing is if they accept javascript or not.

[Owen Wengerd]

I make subjective judgements about a blogger's bias based primarily on what he or she writes, but who they work for has some influence on how I perceive what is written.

Ranking blogs is interesting and attracts some attention from the rankees (and in this case it motivated me to create a Technorati account and update some outdated contact information on Alexa), but watching rankings is a slippery slope that I have no interest in prolonging.

[Dana Breig Probert]

We are all biased. Nobody is independant. I'd say a CAD blog is any blog written about CAD, or written by someone who is a CAD professional and isn't entirely personal. I'd still consider Civil 3D Rocks a "CAD blog" even though now I just post quasi-personal fun stuff- because it is related to my life and musings as someone who is completely engrossed in CAD, or more appropriately, Civil 3D. The personal twist, the personal bias, the sponsorship- it doesnt matter. Blogs are rarely corporate cheerleading machines- because those that attempt that approach fail quickly or just become ignored and boring.

[chris]

Really interesting question, Franco: what makes a blog independent? My opinion: everyone has biases and dependencies on something (there aren't many hermit monk bloggers that I know of), so there are no true "independent of everything" blogs. Sure, there are blogs written by people that have no ties to vendors, so they can be considered vendor-independent. There are also blogs written by people that have no ties to traditional media, so they can be considered media-independent blogs.

So, if you accept the fact that everyone has some dependencies, I think what makes the difference is how transparent the author is with their dependencies. As far as bloggers may try to distance themselves from the dreaded "main stream media", there is at least one important aspect that they would do well to pay attention to: disclosure (actually there are probably two or there aspects...proper punctuation and spelling come to mind ;-).

If a blogger discloses their dependencies then the reader can make an intelligent choice about the credibility and perspective that the blogger has. If they hide some dependencies, then I think the reader needs to be suspect.

[Dana Breig Probert]

This is fun! I like the idea very much Franco. As much as we all care about the CAD community at large, secretly, we all want to be on top of that list :)

RIDDLE:

What is the fastest way to increase your technorati ranking?

ANSWER:

Post a list of blogs... If you are feeling brave, rank them. Then every one mentioned in the list links back to you.