Top 100 List Update

Written by: burt
Date: September 20, 2007
Filed under: AIS Success
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Well, I now have a live preview over at 5starred.com - you can see the general idea of how I am doing things. I believe that User Voting takes away the bias of a site which (for one reason or another) might have great PR or great Technorati.

The Top 10, as of right now (Thursday, 3:17pm BST) are as follows;

And yet, the Top 10 on the original 45n5 list looks a little like these! I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I wonder just how Mark is using the metrics in order to determine the results?

The good thing about my script is that the positions can change on a minute by minute basis. This means that more visits will be seen due to people wanting to check whereabouts they are on the list! More visitors is surely good…

So, let's look at Marks Top 10, and see where they are on mine;

http://www.problogger.net/ #28
http://www.johnchow.com/ ~ #39
http://www.shoemoney.com/ ~ #29
http://performancing.com/ ~ (not on list, must have misssed this one, shit happens!)
http://www.doshdosh.com/ ~ #1
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/ ~ #4
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/ ~ #38
http://andybeard.eu/ ~ #12
http://www.emomsathome.com/ ~ #14
http://www.natewhitehill.com/ ~ #5

That's quite interesting. Although not many people have seen my script, it appears that the best blogs rise to the top even with User Voting. Note that 3 of Marks Top 10, also appear on my Top 10. With another 2 just outside my Top 10.

Very interesting to see that the "bigger" bloggers (Chow, Rowse, Starak, Schoemaker) are languishing in the 30's or so…

However, as I already mentioned, it only takes a few good votes for the cream to rise to the top. And my script just has not had enough soak-testing to give good results. Though it can be seen that a number of Blogs are broadly equivalent on both Marks version of the top 100 and my version…

Updates to my Script

Vlad wished the ability to use Anchor Text for the URLs. That was easily added to the base-code and works perfectly on my test server.
I also made the Admin area a bit more intuitive, for easier use when dealing with lots of URLs
I have my programmer working on a way to add in Alexa Rankings.

When is it being released?

Well, I hoped today, but I might put it off until I can get some more feedback from those who see the site at 5starred.com. With more input I can make any interesting changes…

So the question is; what would you want to see in a Topsites Script?

Comments

Comment by Gary — September 21, 2007 @ 12:47 pm

OK, this script is just about done now.

The Alexa Rank has now been added, as well as a new metric called "Rank by 5 Star" - which is basically a calculation based on an amalgamation of Google PR, Alexa, Technorati and User Votes.

I still need to write a User Manual for it to show how to install and how the Admin side works. After this is done, it's all systems go!
Comment by Vlad — September 21, 2007 @ 1:43 pm

I think the voting system is the cause your top ten are a little different from Mark's top ten. When I saw it for the first time, I of course vote for my blog and it jumped to #15, when other bloggers discover this list and send their readers to vote for their blog things may change even further.
Comment by Gary — September 21, 2007 @ 1:47 pm

That's good though, right? Marks list never changes - how boring

Anyway, I now added Alexa Rank, and made a little algorithm to rank sites (like Mark does). It'll be interesting to see just how close they come (compare marks top 10 to my top 10 after I add alexa)…
Comment by Gary — September 21, 2007 @ 2:04 pm

OK, I took the top 17 of Marks, as so

1. Problogger #1
2. John Chow #2
3. Shoemoney #3
4. Performancing #4
5. Dosh Dosh #5
6. Daily Blog Tips #6
7. Entrepreneurs Journey #7
8. Andy Beard - Niche marketing #8
9. Emoms At Home #10
10. Nate Whitehill #13
11. 5 Star Affiliate Programs #9
12. Carl Ocab #15
13. NetBusinessBlog #14
14. Ades Blog #11
15. 45n5 #12
16. Courtney Tuttle #17
17. Tyler Cruz #16

The numbers AFTER the names are the rank that my algorithm gives WITHOUT user voting. So, Marks algo and my algo are quite similar. But my algo also takes into account user voting, which smooths out the results and makes them change more often. Smooting is good

For example, I gave a 5 star vote to Andy Beard, so his blog moved up from #8 to #4. Not a massive move, particularly when each site might get a few hundred votes…

I have all this up and running on the Dev Server, not the live server…

Thoughts?
Comment by Gary — September 21, 2007 @ 5:52 pm

OK, I have now updated the live server with Alexa, and smoothed out the "user voting" jumps by having the results ranked by "5" - in other words an amalgam of Technorati, Alexa, PR and User Voting…

So, now you can compare the original list, and the 5* list.

I await any comments or suggestions!
Comment by Vlad — September 21, 2007 @ 8:19 pm

Gary,

I hope you do not feel that I am criticizing…. I am just jealous of your programing skills.

The only downside that I see is the fact that it going to require PHP5, I have only one web hosting plan with PHP5 and not the one that I put most of my efforts in….
Comment by SarahG — September 21, 2007 @ 9:06 pm

The list seems pretty good. Only downside I can see is that repeat visitors can reload the page and vote again. I realise it's not really possible to truely prevent this but perhaps through cookies it could be detered a little.
Comment by Gary — September 21, 2007 @ 9:50 pm

Vlad, php5.2 required for the latest alexa function. php5 or better required for pr and technorati function. Less than php5 would be User Voting only…

Sarah, should not be able to vote for the same site two times? Could you try?
Comment by SarahG — September 21, 2007 @ 10:20 pm

Just tried 3 I voted on yesterday and it registered my second vote too.
Comment by Gary — September 21, 2007 @ 11:07 pm

Sarah, it should track by IP, though I did have to reset the site in order to add the Alexa ranks - so I might have inadvertently deleted any cahced files. Ah well.
Comment by SarahG — September 21, 2007 @ 11:15 pm

Ahh IP, maybe it's also because I rebooted the router several times today?
Comment by Gary — September 21, 2007 @ 11:49 pm

Ahhh, could well be

If you have some PHP5 (preferably 5.2) chuck me an email and I'll bung you a copy of the script to play with.
Comment by Gary — September 21, 2007 @ 11:53 pm

Same for any other reader of osWorld - if you have PHP5.2 hosting chuck me an email to oscshops AT gmail DOT com and you can have a go at the scirpt too…

I'm after feedback, lots of lovely feedback!
Comment by One Dollar A Day — March 2, 2008 @ 11:27 pm

Hi Gary, did you ever make this available to buy? (Even better if you're still giving it to osWorld readers :P). I just had an idea for a site and remembered reading you'd made a script, but I can't find a link to buy it anywhere…cheers!
Comment by burt — March 3, 2008 @ 9:34 am

I never bothered making it available as only 1 Beta tester got back to me, and he couldn't use it as PHP5 is needed. And to those Beta Testers who never got back to me - thanks

ODAD, bung me an email to oscshops at gmail and I'll sort out a download for you. PHP5 needed!