twofootedtackle Premier League Blog Index, June 2009

In the real world I am a social media planner at Porter Novelli, concerning myself with how influential and important bloggers are and how public relations can and should act in the social media space. Inevitably, I've begun looking at football bloggers in this way, so if you feel like I'm staring at you through a telescope, you're right - and I apologise.

Anyway, a little while back I starting playing with some tools to try and establish the "influence" of various football blogs, and came up with a couple of graphs which showed the supposed influence of a bunch of Major League Soccer bloggers.

However, I increasingly think football is different, so I've come up with another way. I don't want to measure "influence", because I'm not sure it means anything to football bloggers. And then I went back to the blog of my friend Brendan Cooper, and his legendary blog index.

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. MLS is coming up in a couple of weeks, but this here post brings you the twofootedtackle Premier League Blogs Index (June 2009).

The stats underneath all this were correct at 16th May 2009. Incidentally, 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. Just be nice.

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

I think that about covers it, so let's get going.

Premier League, June 2009

1. Soccerlens - Technorati Authority: 305, TFT Index: 1.00


2. EPL Offside - Technorati Authority: 191, TFT Index: 0.66


3. EPL Talk - Technorati Authority: 119, TFT Index: 0.52


4. Who Ate All The Pies - Technorati Authority: 113, TFT Index: 0.43


5. Off The Post - Technorati Authority: 104, TFT Index: 0.40


6. The Run of Play - Technorati Authority: 72, TFT Index: 0.33


7. Unprofessional Foul - Technorati Authority: 57, TFT Index: 0.31


8. Dirty Tackle - Technorati Authority: 77, TFT Index: 0.30


9. Caught Offside - Technorati Authority: 54, TFT Index: 0.29


10. Prem Tales - Technorati Authority: N/A (1), TFT Index: 0.26


11. twohundredpercent - Technorati Authority: 36, TFT Index: 0.25


12. twofootedtackle - Technorati Authority: 24, TFT Index: 0.16


13. Football Corner - Technorati Authority: 1, TFT Index: 0.16


14. A More Splendid Life - Technorati Authority: 12, TFT Index: 0.13


15. Soccerpie - Technorati Authority: 18, TFT Index: 0.11


16. Unsung Heroes - Technorati Authority: 4, TFT Index: 0.10


17. Buzzin Football - Technorati Authority: 18, TFT Index: 0.09


18. Left Back In The Changing Room - Technorati Authority: 1, TFT Index: 0.05

Notes

So there you have it, the first ever twofootedtackle Index. I don't think there are too many surprises. Ahmed Bilal's Soccerlens is the predictable leader despite covering all sorts of stuff outside the Premier League too. The Offside and EPL Talk follow, which is hardly shocking, and Who Ate All The Pies and Off The Post are both superb so it's good to see them up there.

There are one or two with which I'm not familiar, so I hope this post serves to open everybody's eyes to a new blog or two.

The Rules

1. No club-specific blogs
2. No highlights blogs or aggregators
3. Comment scores based on PL posts only
4. Blogs were not included if they have not posted recently
5. Major media outlets excluded
6. Gossip sites excluded
7. Relevancy of posts is at my discretion, but I'm nice about it
8. Blogs without Technorati get an Authority of 1
9. Liveblog posts do not count
10. Larger sites with only one Technorati profile have their full Authority counted