We at Technorati are a bunch of geeks, and we're always coming up with new ways to try to measure the blogosphere. Sometimes, we just slap these numbers up on the web site without doing a great job of explaining what they are. For instance, if you search for a blog's URL on Technorati, you might find a results page that looks like this one.
We display four count-related numbers in just this little part of the page. Here's what they mean:
- Rank 1,375:the number of blogs, plus one, that have more than 1,005 blogs linking to them
- 1,919 links: the number of links pointing at this URL in the last 180 days
- 1,005 blogs: the number of distinct blogs pointing at this URL in the last 180 days
- 3,149 links: the total number of links we found pointing at this blog, ever
In other words, the numbers in the green box reflect activity in the last 180 days, while the number of links directly below the green box is the total for as long as we have data.
The 180-day window means that ranks and link counts go up and down. Some bloggers see their counts rise steadily when others link to their blog. In the chart below, we see 200 days of linking to www.perezhilton.com. For purposes of ranking and comparison, we count only those links in the last 180 days (those in the red box.) Perez' counts are going up. Yay!
On the other hand, others see their counts plummet when a flurry of 180-day-old activity disappears from our radar. In the chart below, the folks at Strumpette made a big big stir about 190 days ago. But that peak of linking activity, just to the left and outside of the red box, is no longer counted. Strumpette's link counts have been falling for the last week. Bummer.
UPDATE: Kevin pointed out a subtle distinction with the rankings. Since blogs often have the same number of blogs linking to them, several blogs can share a ranking. In the example above, the ranking of 1,375 means that there are 1,374 blogs with more than 1,005 blogs linking to them, and an unreported number that have 1,005 such links.
