The IceRocket.com however many

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There is a lot of talk these days in the blogosphere about the need for lists of blogs. People seem to want a starting point in order to find their ways to what current lists are basically saying are the most popular blogs.

The problem with the lists I have seen is that they are far from being the most popular. This isn’t a personal preference issue, its a criteria issue. Right now all the “most popular lists” appear to do their ranking based off of number of links. If 2,500 blogs that are indexed by the engine are linked to blogmaverick.com, then this blog would rank where ever that falls.

Of course the first nitpick is that most people don’t reference to blogs purely by URL or even name. More often its a link to Cubans Blog, or Steve Rubel or Jeff Jarvis, or Jason’s blog. But the bigger question is this, if a blog that no one sees links to your blog, does that make your blog more popular?

Of course not, it just means that one person (at least we hope its a person and not splog) knows about your blog and has offered a link.

The true test of popularity, if that is what we are trying to capture, is in how many people at least go to the blog, and from there hopefully read it.

Which leads to what we are evaluating doing at IceRocket.com

We have feature called linktracker. What linktracker does is count the number of people, in realtime, who have linked to a given post on your blog. We are working on updating this citation, so that it also can count the number of people who have actually viewed the given blog post.

We aren’t there yetin making this fast enough to give back your relative ranking in terms of actual number of readers, but we are making progress. We are also considering adding code to allow you to pick a category that you want to be ranked in to the code…ie, Personal Diary, Politics, Entertainment, whatever.

So, if you would like to stand up and be counted, take a look at the code required by linktrackerand feel free to add it.

We would also love to get your feedback and ideas on how we should implement this feature and how we should present our IceRocket.com List

32 thoughts on “The IceRocket.com however many”

  1. Very interesting info, look about this on http://www.hot-maldives.ru too.

    Comment by Jordan Bimson -

  2. That was a crazy episode. I definately didn’t see that ending coming. Love the show.
    -Peace
    Mark

    Comment by Noni Juice -

  3. I read over your blog, and i found it inquisitive.

    Comment by Noni Juice -

  4. hen weekends sites are a case in point

    Comment by Luke -

  5. No doubt, it’s one of the most interesting sites I’ve been at. Thanks! 🙂
    ————————–
    Jimmy from *\/* phentermine (http://www.phentermine-support.com) *\/*

    Comment by Phentermine -

  6. No doubt, it’s one of the most interesting sites I’ve been at. Thanks! 🙂
    ————————–
    Jimmy from *\/* phentermine (http://www.phentermine-support.com) *\/*

    Comment by Phentermine -

  7. Link Tracker is what have been using for awhile now. it works well..

    servant5150
    http://hookahforum.com
    http://hookah-information.com

    Comment by adam -

  8. This is a great idea to revolutionize the blog search rankings and I’m completely behind it. You should check out the Go Big Network Blog, http://blog.gobignetwork.com/ , for some other solid thoughts by industry leaders.

    The Go Big Network http://www.gobignetwork.com is also a great place to connect with entrepreneurs and other individuals in the startup community. It’s right up your alley.

    Comment by John Sanders -

  9. Very rightly written article, it arrests the attention of the reader. The subject is outlined with clear understanding and focus.

    Comment by Marry -

  10. great work!!

    Comment by val u. barrutia -

  11. I use Link Tracker. I am happy with it.

    Comment by phone card -

  12. Maybe your comment wasnt welcomed by the admin?

    Comment by Ruddy -

  13. I have a similar problem like Nathan. My blog isn’t indexed in blogs.icerocket.com although I did get linked from problogger.net, feedburner.com and many others. I submited my feed several times but there is stil no sign of my blog in icerocket. Why?

    Comment by Miha -

  14. everything that u said was right. But how do u begin to make ur blog famous? I’ve started my blog page, written very intersting articles, but no one knows about it. And I dont want to add every other link in my page just to bring me traffic. Is there any solution?

    Comment by abinand -

  15. I don’t have an opportunity to check this right now, but it seems worthwhile to note. Just as it is important to make Web publishing compatible with Web browsers, it is important to make additions like linktracker compatible with the big blogging hosts. I will check MSN Spaces and some others later.

    Good stuff!

    Comment by Walter Lounsbery -

  16. Wow, I guess the fact that I didn’t show up till the fourth page of results on a search for my name, plus that submission page being down, combined to throw me off. Still, while perfect relevancy would have every blogger’s blog show up as #1 on a search for their name, at least I did find some interesting blogs quoting me (and stealing my content).

    Comment by Nathan Weinberg -

  17. “…what current lists are basically saying are the most popular blogs.”

    Marc: No one is interested in “most popular”. That represents a pre-web way of thinking that leads us straight down the sinkhole from which we’re struggling to emerge. Popularity is not only a poor indicator of quality, it actually *precludes* quality in many cases.

    And make no mistake; what people want is the freshest, highest quality stuff. *Before* it gets a chance to become popular and mediocre.

    What most link-tracking systems (like Google, Technorati, etc.) are doing is searching for quality by first seeking to establish authority. The problem with their method is that links were never meant to convey anything more than, well… linkage. The ultimate meaning of <a href=”http://foo.com/”>Foo Corp</a> is simply “here’s a link to Foo Corp.” Trying to layer assumptions about quality atop such a simple statement is where things go off the rails.

    So if Icerocket wants to innovate, you need to look for ways to recognize quality *before there are any links to it*. The search engine that can spot a trend before it actually becomes one will be the next Google.

    Comment by Roger Benningfield -

  18. Nathan,

    We have you indexed and have had you in our index for a long time:

    http://blogs.icerocket.com/search?q=%2BblogId%3A205700

    We are adding some servers this weekend and that is why your latest stuff may not be in there. Our blog submission page is down right now while we are adding hardware, anyone looking to make sure they are indexed should feel free to email us.

    Blake Rhodes
    IceRocket.com

    Comment by Blake Rhodes -

  19. Mark,

    Glad to see the progress. When you first announced your blog search on this here blog, I posted a comment about how the results were completely screwed – how I typed in “Mark Cuban” and this blog itself wasnt even listed on the first page of IceRocket.com (i dont even think it was listed on the second at the time). Surely when someone types “Mark Cuban” in the blog search, this blog should be the #1 search result. I couldn’t care less about someone who posted the phrase “Mark Cuban” in their blog.

    It was a relevancy issue and we even went back and forth on email 🙂 You told me how search results were first sorted by date of the the last blog entry. Popularity is important, and with popularity comes credibility. People want to read an author who is credible. Thats why your blog gets more hits than mine, and believe it or not I work on the internet and have over a million unique hits that flow throughout my domains, so marketing wouldn’t even be the problem if I were to market my own blog. The bottom line is people wouldn’t read it for the reason that I am not credible. People dont know who I am, but they know Mark Cuban is a successful entrepreneur who owns an NBA basketball team. Its that reason that brings me here, and many other people, and probably why most people including me refuse to read any joe schmoe’s blog, but will read yours.

    Other people who have built up successful blogs from nothing have done so because their opinion is trusted. Over time they have gained the credibility of their readers through their posts and their readers feel they are bringing them valuable information. When it comes to blogs, CREDIBILITY OF THE AUTHOR IS EVERYTHING.

    Anyone can create a blog, but the people only read the blogs where they deem information is valuable, and that comes from authors who are credible. Those are the blogs that are the most popular.

    I have lots of ideas, but I won’t post here. My email is above if you’re interested 🙂 Good luck with the Mavs, you turned it into a great franchise, and I’m sure icerocket will succeed as well.

    Comment by Adam -

  20. Uh, Mark, i just realized that IceRocket isn’t indexing any of my blogs, and that its URL submission form doesn’t have the capability to receive my feed (possibly because I use WordPress, which uses virual URIs). Considering I was listed in the new Feedster 500 list, wouldn’t you consider it a seriosu problem if your search engine is unable to index any blogs on that list, and a far more serious one if it can’t index WordPress blogs?

    Comment by Nathan Weinberg -

  21. Ah… I should have previewed before posting… my html was consumed.
    But it seems there is no way to post the code anyway. Even replacing < with the “&lt;” html equivalency, blogmaverick automagically converts the http:// into a URL, and truncates the text of it. 🙁

    Comment by Wolfger -

  22. Linktracker is nice, and a breeze to install with Blogger. Simply include the header info (from the Linktracker directions) and PHP script, then go to blogger and locate the line
    posted by @ ” title=”permanent link”> 

    and place the following line after it:
    “>”>Linking Posts 

    In response to Busty:
    Sure, you can get the things IceRocket offers in other places. But where else can you go to get the whole package? Would you go to 3 different stores to buy different things, or one store that carries everything you need.
    Also, Blake Rhodes is unique. This is a guy who responded personally to a letter of complaint in minutes. On a weekend. And started a dialogue with me. That personal touch is missing from *EVERY* other service on the web. One simple, prompt e-mail has solidified my relationship with IceRocket.

    …and I agree with Phil. A firefox extension would be nice.

    Comment by Wolfger -

  23. “if a blog that no one sees links to your blog, does that make your blog more popular?”

    Nope. But if a one popular blog links to your blog then it makes you more popular than a blog that has three links from unpopular blogs.

    Google does this with PageRank. We need BlogRank.

    Comment by Hashim -

  24. How about an ice rocket search plug-in for Mozilla Firefox?

    Comment by Phil -

  25. Why are you not competing with Google in a significant way? You are obviously quite smart but when it comes to icerocket I think you are way off the mark. There is a huge opportunity that MSN and Ask Jeeves are starting exploit and that you are not. This blog feature is all well and good but you need to concentrate on search first. You are one of a handful of people who could create the next major search engine and icerocket does not cut it. It’s good but it could be great with some changes.

    Comment by Steve -

  26. IceRocket is great! It definately is the unsung hero of the internet today.

    Comment by James -

  27. Not sure I am understanding the benefits of this. If I want to see who is linking to my blog, I can search in Google. If I want to see trackbacks, I use MT. If I want to know how many people are visiting my blog, I use sitemeter or my raw logs.

    Wots unique?

    Comment by Busty -

  28. Mr. Cuban,

    have you seen http://www.blogtopsites.com They use EvoTopSites which can be found here. http://www.evo-dev.com/products/evotopsites/

    Just thought you would like to know.

    Thanks,
    Shane Coffey

    Comment by Cellounge Admin (Shane Coffey) -

  29. I was complaining about the Feedster 500 in my own blog earlier this week but I like the direction you people are going. Sounds like it will be a lot more valid than the existing lists.

    Comment by Alfred Thompson -

  30. Mark, agreed! If I can easily integrate this into my template, I will do so. IceRocket is continuing to do great stuff and not really getting the recognition it deserves.

    Comment by Steve Rubel -

  31. Genius!!!

    Comment by Kevin -

  32. It was a relevancy issue and we even went back and forth on email 🙂 You told me how search results were first sorted by date of the the last blog entry. Popularity is important, and with popularity comes credibility.

    Comment by wow powerleveling -

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