twofootedtackle Major League Soccer Blog Index, June 2009
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
I may be a middling football blogger by night, but by day I am a social media planner at Porter Novelli. As a combination of the two I've become interested in how influential/important/other stuff football bloggers are in their areas. Earlier in the month, I published my first Premier League Blog Index. Here's my first Major League Soccer effort, based on my friend Brendan Cooper's legendary blog index.
(Some parts of this blog post will be regurgitated month-by-month in order to explain the idea)
So I'm pleased to present the twofootedtackle Index, a statistical yet arbitrary measure of nothing in particular. I hope it somehow shows the most important football blogs, but importance is such a ridiculous word. I guess it just measures...something. Anyways, I'll be running the report once every two months and covering the Premier League and Major League Soccer. This here post brings you the twofootedtackle Major League Soccer Blogs Index (June 2009).
(Told you so)
The stats underneath all this were correct at 25th May 2009. Like the Premier League index, I'd like to turn this into a top 25, so if I've missed any blog you think is worthy of inclusion (within the rules, below), please leave me a comment. Also, if you feel aggrieved to have not been included I'll be happy to run the rule over your site and see if you make it. One notable omission is The Kartik Report, which I have deemed to have focused recently very heavily on the USMNT. Any disagreements, just let me know and I'll pop it back in.
The list came from my own blogrolls and a good few hours' searching, so it's not exactly scientific - more of an indicator. Many blogs didn't make the cut.
Under the hood
The twofootedtackle index is based on a series of not-very-complicated sums which were devised to make the maths easier for my feeble brain. I won't go into the calculations, but the important points are:
- The index covers Technorati authority, the number of comments attracted by the last ten relevant posts, the tenure (i.e. age) of the blog and the recency of the latest relevant post
- These factors are weighted. Technorati authority is the most important, followed by tenure, then comments. The recency of the latest relevant post is also factored in quite heavily, so the index numbers of blogs with a week or more since that post are affected significantly
- This is an index, so the highest scoring blog is given a score of 1.00, and the remaining blogs given a score below that based on percentages of the top blog's total
Major League Soccer, June 2009
- Soccerlens - Technorati Authority: 298, TFT Index: 1.00
- Soccer By Ives - Technorati Authority: 135, TFT Index: 0.82
- MLS Talk - Technorati Authority: 48, TFT Index: 0.30
- This Is American Soccer - Technorati Authority: 32, TFT Index: 0.28
- Climbing The Ladder - Technorati Authority: 26, TFT Index: 0.23
- WV Hooligan - Technorati Authority: 22, TFT Index: 0.18
- US Soccer Players - Technorati Authority: 1, TFT Index: 0.17
- MLS Offside - Technorati Authority: 24, TFT Index: 0.16
- The Kin Of Fish - Technorati Authority: 14, TFT Index: 0.14
- MLS Daily - Technorati Authority: 1, TFT Index: 0.11
- MLS Fan Blog - Technorati Authority: 4, TFT Index: 0.10
- Match Fit USA - Technorati Authority: 1, TFT Index: 0.09
- Inside Soccer USA - Technorati Authority: 1, TFT Index: 0.09
- The Zygo Soccer Report - Technorati Authority: 1, TFT Index: 0.09
- Ginge Talks The Footy - Technorati Authority: 5, TFT Index: 0.08
- The 24th Minute - Technorati Authority: 1, TFT Index: 0.08
- Soucie On Soccer - Technorati Authority: 1, TFT Index: 0.08
- Advantage Played - Technorati Authority: 1, TFT Index: 0.00
- The Touchline - Technorati Authority: 1, TFT Index: 0.00
Notes
So that's the first MLS twofootedtackle Index. No surprise to see Ahmed Bilal's Soccerlens up there, and I hope my weekly column will go some way to consolidating that position. I'm delighted to see Ives Galarceps right up there too - for anyone who's not come across Ives yet he is, in a word, brilliant. I suspect Jason Davis' Match Fit USA will creep up over the following months, while Ginge Talks The Footy and Soucie On Soccer also seem to be getting some traction.
I think one or two, notably the superb MLS Daily, are surprisingly low. Whether I caught them at a bad time or it highlights a specific flaw in my calculations remains to be seen. Apologies if I've offended anyone here.
The Rules
- No club-specific blogs
- No highlights blogs or aggregators
- Comment scores based on PL posts only
- Blogs were not included if they have not posted recently
- Major media outlets excluded
- Gossip sites excluded
- Relevancy of posts is at my discretion, but I'm nice about it
- Blogs without Technorati get an Authority of 1
- Liveblog posts do not count
- Larger sites with only one Technorati profile have their full Authority counted
1 comments:
I would leave US Soccer Players out if you're not including the MNT blog done by the US Soccer Federation. US Soccer Players is operated by the union.
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