The truth about Beebo: Tom tests a theory on the combintation of traits that make a weblog popular by disecting the top eight blogs, as rated by Beebo (May 11, 16:42 GMT+10 issue). He also says, "I'm always amazed that my favourite weblogs [riothero, megnut, kitschbitch, powazek...] aren't more well read." Beyond the obvious self-agrandizement purpose of this post (evhead™ being #7 on the list and scoring an eight on Tom's famous/endearing scale), I wanted to point out that the corollary between Beebo ranking (based, of course, on links from other blogs) and actual traffic or page views (which, to me, seems a more accurate measure of "popularity") is perhaps less than commonly thought. Having access to the logs of a few sites on the Beebo chart, because we host them -- as well as certain "unfair" insights into the traffic of thousands of other blogs, which load the Blogger button from our server -- I've noticed, for example, that Meg's traffic is close to mine these days, even though I continue to trounce her on the Beebo scale. (And that's not even counting her cam, which practically brings down our network with hits.) And that, as should be expected, Webby-Award-winning (since the Webby's are the equivalent of the Oscars, every winner will not have that permanently attached to their name) CockyBastard kicks both our asses traffic-wise -- and he's not even on the Beebo list. Not to discredit Beebo for what it is, but just keep that in mind.

    
Another thing to consider, even as it pertains to links measurement, is that Beebo's source list contains just 402 blogs and that there are now well over 1,500 in Blogger's directory alone (which is available for such purposes in XML, I might add).

    
Oh, and I realize, that you, of course, never check Beebo for your own ranking and don't pay attention to your traffic, because you just do it for yourself, and that I'm betraying my shallow nature for noticing, let alone commenting on, any of this. :)