Papworth loses, Acidlabs wins in battle of the Aussie marketing blogs
One of Australia’s best known social media commentators has seen a dramatic decline in the popularity of her blog, according to a new ranking published today.
Laurel Papworth has dropped from number 4 to number 26 in just three months, according to The Marketing Pioneers list, run by Julian Cole, a digital strategist for Sydney-based agency The Population. The decline could be because she recently moved to a new blogging platform with a new url.
Other dramatic moves in the list saw the Copyright blog, written by Jonathan Crossfield, fall from number 6 to number 13 and the Crikey-hosted Corporate Engagement, by PR expert Trevor Cook, fall from number 7 to number 21. The highest new entry into the list of 129 sites was Acidlabs, which was new in at number 4.
Bannerblog, which showcases online banner advertising remains the number one rated site, while the Sydney-based Servant of Chaos is still at number two.
The ranking methodology includes figures from Google’s Page Rank score, Alexa traffic data, Technorati and Coles’ own ratign of the frequency and quality of content.
I suggest Laurel’s fall is 100% due to changing blogging platforms. Links in to your site take time to re-establish on the new site and so you tend to lose all your Technorati authority (2 parts of the Pioneers equation). Happened to me when I moved to WordPress last year and I am still recovering.
Still, there are some great sites on the list and its growing each quarter which is a good thing.
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I guarantee you Laurel’s change is completely due to her risky (and gutsy) change of domain. I imagine she still has plenty of traffic and is getting a heap more leads than I am.
My transition to being seen as a marketing blog is odd. I understand where the view comes from, but I still struggle to reconcile it internally. I talk about marketing-related stuff, sure. But I’m no marketing expert.
I still feel that what I’m talking about is better communication – internally and across the wall. If that’s marketing, I’m delighted to take on the mantle.
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How about the rise and rise of Julian’s own boss Tony at the Population who is now in the Top 50 just under Matt Granfield whose blog . What do we attribute that to? hmmm
And the Pioneer rankings are becoming a bit of a joke they are so subjective. If B&T publishes is should at least be credible and more independent. eg. Top 100, and then peer vote/review on the innovation scores.
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i think the list is a good thing – it brings attention to blogs that are out there – but there needs to be more attention paid to the pioneer score. there are some blogs ranking at 7 and above that just aren’t worthy of that score.
I understand it’s hard to critique blogs – especially when some of these blogs are active supporters of Julians – but maybe it’s worth taking out the pioneer score and basing it purely on external data. Still, I don’t think Jules has ever claimed it to be exhaustive – I’d say he more does it to raise awareness of other blogs rather than a contest.
Talking Digital you are right on the money with it being more about highlighting the online marketing bloggers. The pioneers score is my own personal score, which is subjective. I am really sorry if you do not like it.
Anon, the only thing that I control is the Pioneer score, Tony being in the Top 50 has nothing to do with me, the only thing I can control is the Pioneer score which I gave him an 8 for.
Stephen, I think you deserve to be on the list because communication is a vital part of marketing. If you would like to be taken off, please let me know.
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I agree with Talking Digital (not sure whether it’s Ben or Liam under that login) – _if_ the list is to become something that is held up as an actual ranking, as opposed to how Julian intended just as a list of interesting marketing-related titles, then it needs to be based on objective data.
If though the intention is just to highlight blogs in the area, and encourage people to read them, then scrap the rankings – maybe just triage them as that’ll make it clearer it’s as much opinion as data, while maintaining the objective of simply highlighting breadth.
Julian, I think its a good initiative, better to have it than nothing at all even if someone thinks its imperfect.
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@ talking digital and anon
‘rise and rise of Julian’s boss’
‘active supporters of Julians’
You guys are making him sound like a bloody supervillain!
People read marketing blogs for all sorts of reasons. some are going to be like The Age. Others like The Herald Sun. Some like Perez Hilton. Each to their own.
All I know is that list would’ve taken a long time to compile and it raises the profile of a lot of interesting people.
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I actually built Julian’s bonus structure and succession plan around me making the top 50. Looks like he has a bright career in front of him!!!
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Julian, I don’t want to be taken off the list at all! I’m honored to be amongst such company. Just expressing my internal intellectual conflict, which I need to get over.
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Julian gave me a good score. Who cares what Google and Alexa and Technorati think? 😛
Mumbles, you are very naughty: enjoy the mileage at my expense. Heh.
For the initiated, I moved from blogspot to wordpress a few days ago, didn’t lose readers, just lost the robotic linky goodness 😉
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Yes Laurel’s rating purely due to the hundreds of links into the old SilkCharm.blogspot domain now down the pan – but here in the background of the SilkCharm household, I can hear the music from Rocky, and there is Laurel running up those big bright blogosphere steps, fists in the air, she will be back!!! chants – laurelpapworth.com, laurelpapworth.com…
BTW Julian my GPR is still 5 not 4 🙂 but that would put me ahead of you 🙂 Don’t we love lists – creates such a warm, camaraderie and hardly any competition…how about we compare ourselves with the rest of the world rather than bickering with each other…but where be the fun in that 🙂
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Laurel clearly you need to disable comments in your blog to get your ranking back up.
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@matt hazel – no. i think julian is great … all i said was there are people out there that support him (ie linking, promoting his blog) that might cloud his ability to rate their blogs based on his own opinion.
“All I know is that list would’ve taken a long time to compile and it raises the profile of a lot of interesting people.”
couldn’t agree more.
@eunmac Agreed, Laurel, please disable comments as soon as possible, Seth recommends it. I did it last year and became so famous I had to get body guards to protect me from the throngs of bloggers.
I’d to say, its nice to have a reference list of Australian only bloggers, but we do need to be careful that we don’t become self indulgent and self centered.(When I say we, I’m not actually on the list, but wouldn’t mind it)
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I was fully expecting my score to drop having spent two months getting married and honeymooning around Europe. In that period, my Technorati score halved as the lack of activity didn’t attract fresh links in. So the only surprise to me is that I only fell back to 13. Woohoo!
Now I’m back and with the fresh Moggie Award under my belt, I’m ready to start clawing back those links and making some noise. (Then again, I swear Technorati is more unreliable now than ever).
In the end, it’s all fun, not to be taken too seriously (otherwise we’d be saying Alexa is worth stressing over!) and encourages us to read and support each other’s blogs.
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