Umbria's Splogless Blogtopia Ignores A-List
Posted on December 15, 2005
Stephen Baker at Blogspotting has a post about how Umbria Communications, a market intelligence company, monitors the blogosphere. Umbria's CEO Howard Kaushansky told Baker that Umbria's computers don't distinguish between a-list blogs and unknown bloggers because a-list blogs just fan the flames started on other blogs.
Why so? Every blogger speaks to the world, and every post has the potential to set off a conflagration. So, he says, it makes sense to count the matches. It's true that the A-listers play a crucial role. They fan the flames. But by the time they're onto a nasty rumor, complaint, or embarrassment, according to Umbria, it's no longer just a flicker in the forest. It's a blaze. And by that point, you probably don't need a market intelligence company to tell you about it.That's surprising that they would not devote at least slightly more computer power on more popular blogs. They do claim to filter out splogs in their FAQ.
6. Can I get the same insights Umbria provides using a blog search engine?Umbria's splogless blogtopia where all blogs are equal sounds pretty appealing.No. Blog search engines use key word search queries and generate results in real-time, making it very difficult to remove "Splogs" (Spam blogs or fake blogs created to "spoof" or fool search engines and elevate these URLs in search engine rankings) and false positives (e.g., a search on "Apple Computer" that may yield results about someone eating an "apple" while working on their computer). Incidence of Splogs and false positive can skew analysis results by as much as 50%. Umbria has invested in some of the most robust blog spam and false positive detection capabilities available to ensure we produce high quality and highly accurate analysis results unavailable from blog search tools.