The State of the Blogosphere and Posting Frequency

Posted on November 6, 2006

David Sifry, the CEO and founder of Technorati, has a new State of the Blogosphere post. The post says Technorati is now tracking 57 million blogs. It says that 3 million blogs were created in 3rd quarter and that the doubling of the blogosphere has slowed to 236 days. It also says there was a daily average of 1.3 million postings per day in October. Technorati says this number is lower than last quarter but they say it could be because they are letting less spam posts into their index.

The post also includes information about the correlation between the age of a blog, the number of daily posts a blog makes and the number of inbound links a blog receives. The higher ranking blogs tend to be older blogs that make several posts each day.

The Low Authority Group (3-9 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
The average blog age (the number of days that the blog has been in existence) is about 228 days, which shows a real commitment to blogging. However, bloggers of this type average only 12 posts per month, meaning that their posting habits are generally dedicated but infrequent.
The Middle Authority Group (10-99 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
This contrasts somewhat with the second group, which enjoys an average age not much older than the first at 260 days and which posts 50% more frequently than the first. There is a clear correlation between posting volume and Technorati authority ranking.
The High Authority Group (100-499 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
The third group represents a decided shift in blog age while not blogging much more frequently than the last. In keeping with the theme of the maturation of the blogosphere, it seems evident that many of these bloggers were previously in category two and have grown in authority organically over time. In other words, sheer dedication pays off over time.
The Very High Authority Group (500 or more blogs linking in the last 6 months)
In the final group we see what might be considered the blogging elite. This group, which represents more than 4,000 blogs, exhibits a radical shift in post frequency as well as blog age. Bloggers of this type have been at it longer - a year and a half on average - and post nearly twice a day, an increase in posting volume of over 100% from the previous group. Many of the blogs in this category, in fact, are about as old as Technorati and we've grown up together. Some of these are full-fledge professional enterprises that post many, many times per day and behave increasingly like our friends in the mainstream media. As has been widely reported, the impact of these bloggers on our cultures and democracies is increasingly dramatic.

Bloggers Blog just barely fits into the so-called Very High Authority Group with a little over 500 inbound links. Our blogging pattern does match Sifry's description. We are just over a year and a half old (February 2005 launch) and we post on average about 3 times per day. Longevity, posting consistency and linking out (something Sifry didn't measure) are three reliable ways to grow a blog's inbound links. Technorati also provided the following graph that shows blogs with more inbound links tend to post more frequently.