The mystique blog ranking

Blogstreet India, the directory of all blogs Indian, has gone for some changes in its look and probably the algorithm for calculating the blog rank.

And to my surprise, my blog has been ranked 21. [Their top 100 listed here]. Rank twenty one in a country of a billion people.


Before I fling my arms and throw up a party, I introspect. And in less than 10 seconds I figure that the ranking is ridiculous. But then, this also raises a lot of questions about blogging as a phenomenon in India.

1) Flawed rank engine: There is no single ‘good’ ranking engine for Indian blogs. I’ve thought long and hard about it, but haven’t figured the algorithm used by Blogstreet to rank Indian blogs. It was traditionally done by calculating the number of other websites that linked to each blog (called blogrolling) but not any more. I suspect it could now be a mixture of blogroll count and Google Page Rank, but even that doesn’t justify lower ranks to some of the more popular and quality blogs. Only a single digit number (or whereabouts) of Indian blogs actually have a Google Page Rank of 6 (Mine being 5).

Additionally, this engine doesn’t check for dead blogs. A lot of the blogs listed under the top 100 category are dead, some of them being even in top 20. If a ranking engine doesn’t add this into the algorithm, I don’t know what to say. In any case, the algorithm is flawed.

2) Few Indian bloggers: There are not many bloggers in India. Different estimates suggest anywhere about 100,000 blogs but I’m not sure how many of them are readable, public and worth a visit.
Over the couple of years, I’ve come to realize that blogging needs a flair and love for writing and, most importantly, dedication. The other important factor is readership. It’s a vicious circle. You don’t get motivated without readership, and you don’t get readership without good posts. Most – almost 95% - of the people I know started blogging and let it go due to lack of the one of these.

3) Few Indian blog readers: What’s really surprising is why even the number of people who read blogs is far and few in our country. Despite being an IT giant and a good number of people – running into millions – with good exposure to the internet, blogging and blog reading in India is restricted to an extremely small bunch. Guess there’s miles to go for this to change.

All said, I just hope the people who blog now don’t fade into oblivion.