that is a massive chart! very nice.

i submitted my blog to chicagobloggers over a week ago. It still hasn't appeared on their site. I'm very disappointed.

Boy, I wonder if I should try to get the Chicagobloggers thing to take me down, I haven't lived there in a year!

When I submitted back in the day I never even saw it appear on their site. I guess it took them a while

Wow julie. #6 on the list is no longer in Chicago. At least every else gets to move up a notch! :-D

No because I'm a huge loser

Tom, I bet your blog at http://www.xanga.com/tomsaaristo would be high on the list. Just look at all the comments you get every day! Your blog didn't make the list, cuz it's on xanga, and alexa isn't able to track individual xanga blogs. And google doesn't really track links to individual xanga blogs.

According to chicagobloggers.com there are 21 xanga bloggers in chicago. It would be interesting to see a top list of those. I bet you'd be near (or at) the top.

Nice! Thanks for the link.

Woah I am #14... I am e-famous! I guess I better thank all my visitors for checkin in from time to time :)

I'm sorry to report that Sean Carroll of Cosmic Variance is no longer in the metropolitan area.

Hmmm I went through the Top 20 sites that you listed and the following sites are group blogs (besides perhaps not being in Chicago as well)

2. Cosmic Variance
4. Popculture Junkies
9. Livemusic Blog
11. House In Progress (written by 2 people)
12. Too Many Chefs

So while I think the idea of this post was a good one, and it's pleasant to see my site listed (#76 - but obviously higher now), it's hard to look at this list as anything other than a bunch of outgoing links.

Wow, ed thanks for giving more detail on some of these sites. I plan on doing this list every year, I'll have to remember that these sites are group ones, not individual ones.

And your note about SEO outgoing links is interesting. Honestly, it never crossed my mind. I try to do some decent Search Engine Optimization, but I would never just list a crapload of links for SEO. That's just rude. Besides, I would think that having this long list of links would rather hurt my SEO rankings a little, just because of the sheer volume of them.

It's just that when I did this research, I was going to just do a top 20 (Anything more than that and people's eyes start to glaze over). But seeing that I have all this data, I wanted to make it public, so people could find out where they rank on the list. And I could have just listed the URLs as blank non-hotlinked text, but that kinda defeats the handiness of the internet.

So you can see this list however you like, but I never intended it to be just "a bunch of outgoing links."

I know this is an old post but I just came across it and was looking through the sites listed and I noticed one thing.

#7

doesn't even have a Google Page Rank. according to my Google tool bar, so I'm not sure how it ranked higher than some of the blogs below it.

#7 briangardner has an alexa rank of 107372 and a google link quantity of 1,160. These rankings do not include google pagerank. The 1,160 is how many sites link to briangardner.com. In fact right now, there are 1,840 pages linking to briangardner.com.

I plan on doing this list once a year to update these stats. I admit it's not a perfect list, but it's does give a general gauge.

I'm not sure how else I can explain that using the Google link quantity is a really flawed way of measuring "popularity."

Other than to tell you to look at the top 5 results for the link you gave in the reply above. Visit the links and see if you can find the link to #7. I'll give you a hint: it's usually in the footer of the site because it's part of the copyright because he designed the WP theme.

Every site that uses the theme will automatically link to #7 not because it's a popular blog but because it has to.

Another thing to take into consideration when ranking something based on link quantity is where the links are coming from. You could make thousands of replies on blogs a year and sign them all with your url and in most places it would count as a link when the site was crawled again by google.

Page Rank would be a better method of calculating popularity and importance on Google than just the links.

And there's too much weight given to an Alexa rank because it works similar to the way the Neilson(sp?) ratings work for television. In part it's given by people have to have the thing installed in their browsers. If you take a blog about technology and a blog about hot dogs in Chicago which do you think would be visited by more people with a techie add-on to their browser?

And don't even get me started on the fact that you're counting surbanites as Chicago bloggers. :0)

get off your pedestal, MRBROWNTHUMB.

I live in Elmhurst. I was born and raised in Chicago. I have more Chicago in my soul in than 90% of Chicagoans. Many suburbanites are displaced Chicagoans.

UnlikelyMoose when you became a displaced Chicagoan did you also displace your sense of humor? Notice the emoticon after the crack.

btw: spudart

You're the first place I've ever seen that has user friendly V Words for submitting posts. Kudos on the choice. I hate the ones that have all the lines and the fonts look like you're having a bad trip.

brownthumb, the captcha word submit thingy is what comes with the pmachine CMS software. pMachine is no longer developed, but it's still a fine piece of software. I especially like the "notify me when someone replies" option--especially since users don't have to log-in to take advantage of that.

I'm thinking about switching blog platforms to drupal. There's a module for non-member email notification too. And for the captcha, I'll have to try to get drupal to use one that is easier to read like pmachine's. Your feedback is helpful.

Excellent resource and your methodology is spot on. You have some duplicates (localtourist) and Dave Dalka is a spammer (HA!) but I really enjoyed this and found some cool new blogs to read! Check out www.CTAStories.com - an interesting new blog on the CTA.

This is a dam good research. I didn't really get what criteria you've used to actually make this top. Is position 1 blog somehow better than position 13 for instance?

Hey, since I'm listed twice, does it mean I'm doubly important? : )

I know I'm a bit late - just found it by checking my incoming links on...Alexa.

I have to wonder how much time this took you to gather all that data!

Thanks for very interesting article. btw. I really enjoyed reading all of your posts. It’s interesting to read ideas, and observations from someone else’s point of view… makes you think more.

You're the first place I've ever seen that has user friendly V Words for submitting posts. Kudos on the choice. I hate the ones that have all the lines and the fonts look like you're having a bad trip.

Thanks Banqian. I wish I could say it was my choice, but it's merely the captcha that comes with pmachine.

Subject Line: Beat Long Poll Lines with Absentee Ballots from StateDemocracy.org
Many state and local election officials are encouraging voters to use Absentee Ballots to avoid the long lines and delays expected at the polls on November 4th due to the record-breaking surge in newly registered voters.
Voters in most states still have time to obtain an Absentee Ballot by simply downloading an official application form available through www.StateDemocracy.org, a completely FREE public service from the nonprofit State Democracy Foundation.
Read More: http://us-2008-election.blogspot.com/2008/10/beat-long-poll-lines-with-absentee.html

Subject Line : Beat Long Poll Lines with Absentee Ballots from StateDemocracy.org


Many state and local election officials are encouraging voters to use Absentee Ballots to avoid the long lines and delays expected at the polls on November 4th due to the record-breaking surge in newly registered voters.

Voters in most states still have time to obtain an Absentee Ballot by simply downloading an official application form available through www.StateDemocracy.org, a completely FREE public service from the nonprofit StateDemocracy Foundation.


Read More: http://us-2008-election.blogspot.com/2008/10/beat-long-poll-lines-with-absentee.html

Why aren't there any good blogs about the food in Chicago? I could also use a good one about good Chicago Hotels. Any ideas for me?

I was just on a California Vacation and checked out some of the Los Angeles blogs. They don't even come close to my favorite Chicago authors. "#7 briangardner has an alexa rank of 107372 and a google link quantity of 1,160. These rankings do not include google pagerank. The 1,160 is how many sites link to briangardner.com. In fact right now, there are 1,840 pages linking to briangardner.com." this blows LA out of the water.

How about blogs specifically about Chicago? we just put one up and are in the process of interviewing interesting people in the area - http://blog.funsherpa.com

that's an interesting question, funsherpa. The Tribune puts together a list of 100 blogs about chicago.

oops forgot the URL. http://www.chicagosbestblogs.com/