Who are your blog neighbors?

TouchGraph

It has been awhile since I checked out Bloginfluence. This web site generates a concise report on how big a fish a blog is in the blogosphere. Bloginfluence links to TouchGraph. TouchGraph has a cool data visualization graphic tool called TouchGraph Google Browser. It is a Java tool which runs in your browser. To use it you’ll need to have Java enabled. I haven’t checked out TouchGraph for several months. It has greatly improved since the last time I looked at it.

TouchGraph is based on Google’s idea of similar pages. Similar pages are more than just pages that link to each other. Google finds pages as being similar when third page sites frequently link to both, and if the topics on the two pages are similar. Google might find two pages it considers as similar that don’t even link to each other.

TouchGraph asks Google for pages similar to a given URL and then graphs those pages which Google says are most closely related. TouchGraph displays the ten pages Google says are similar and then the ten pages for each of the first set. Here is the display for our blog. TouchGraph uses color to cluster sites that are similar to each other. For example education blogs hanging off The Education Wonks are grouped together in the same color.

You can modify the graph by select a blog in the table on the left and the clicking on the Hide or Expand buttons about the graph. This allows you to explore around.

Another cool feature is you can select a blog in the table and then do a right click over the blog icon in the graph to launch the blog.

This is a fun tool and I’ll probably spend several more hours playing with it.


The Truth Laid Bear

The Truth Laid Bear (TTLB) provides a service for ranking a blog. This ranking is called the TTLB blogsphere Ecosystem. (You have to register to participate.) The ranking is based on how many blogs link to a given blog. Here is the page on our blog. The “Inbound Links” tab shows which blogs currently have many links to our blog. The TTLB is constantly changing. For example the “Inbound Links” use to have a graphical representation of the blogs which frequently link to us.


Google and Technorati

One last technique that I find helpful in understanding where my blog fits in the blogosphere is using Google and Technorati to see who links to our blog. In Google you can add “link:” before a URL and Google will list sites or blogs which link to that URL. For example here are the results for blogs which link to Why Homeschool. Technorati provides a similar service.


These tools can help you better understand the blogosphere and your place in it. They can lead you to blogs you may find interesting and worth following.

Check the tools out. You’ll learn something useful.


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Technorati tags: blogs, TouchGraph, TTLB