Being that it’s the first day of 2009, it’s common to do some sort of review: what was good, bad, popular and unpopular about the year that’s just past.
I couldn’t be bothered.[1]
Instead, I decided to do a “snapshot” post – one of those posts that looks at something current, so that in twelve months time I can look back, do it all again and say “Look what’s changed in the last twelve months”.
After my previous post about the most popular social networking sites in Ireland, I decided to have a look at the most popular Irish Blogs. Before I go through the list, here’s a couple of things to remember:
- I checked the rankings for 179 blogs. This is by no means an exhaustive list of Irish blogs, so if your one isn’t on the list, email me and I’ll update it.
- The list of blogs was taken from my own feed reader and from the Blogrolls of a couple of the more popular blogs on this list.
- The traffic data is taken from Alexa, so while it may not be entirely accurate, it should give a general indication of the relative popularity of those on the list.
- The traffic is based on the last three months only.
- The traffic stats do not contain any information regarding email or RSS subscribers.
- Due to the way that Alexa gathers traffic stats, I was unable to gather stats for blogs hosted on the following sites: blogs.ie, cluas.ie, blogs.msdn.com, blogs.linux.ie.
So with all of that out of the way, lets move on to the list:
Number 20 – John Breslin
John Breslin
Number 19 – Bernard Goldbach
Bernard Goldbach
Number 18 – Cybercom
Cybercom
Number 17 – John M. Ryan
John M. Ryan
Number 16 – Twenty Major
Twenty Major
Number 15 – Grannymar
Grannymar
Number 14 – K8 The G8
K8 The G8
Number 13 – Limerick Blogger
Limerick Blogger
Number 12 – Jason Roe
Jason Roe
Number 11 – Whois Ireland
Whois Ireland
Number 10 – Cormac Moylan
Cormac Moylan
Number 9 – Frank Prendergast
Frank Prendergast
Number 8 – Sabrina Dent
Sabrina Dent
Number 7 – Bock The Robber
Bock The Robber
Number 6 – Head Rambles
Head Rambles
Number 5 – Tom Raftery
Tom Raftery's I.T. Views
Number 4 – Michele Neylon
Michele Neylon
Number 3 – Donncha O’Caoimh
Donncha O'Caoimh
Number 2 – Redfly Marketing
Red Fly Marketing
In at number one, drum roll please….
Number 1 – Damian Mulley
Damian Mulley
In the interests of transparency, you can download the full list of blogs that I checked here. The file is a standard .csv.
- Mainly because my memory is so bad, I can’t remember what was good or bad about last week, never-mind the last twelve months. [↩]
Tags: alexa, Irish Blogs, traffic ranking
10th! 10th! That’s madness. I’m writing that on my tombstone. :)
You have a tombstone already? That’s just freaky!
Hopefully you won’t have a use for it for quite a while! :)
Happy New Year,
Paul.
Nice list, there’s a good few I haven’t come across before here. What about Northern Irish blogs, do they count ;-)
Thanks Lee.
Of course NI blogs do!
Believe it or not, I didn’t actually check where the blogs originated from, I just went with the blogs that I found linked to from those in my feed reader.
Any links that you could give me will be added to the list.
Happy New Year,
Paul.
Thanks for sharing this
A few others to consider – Alexa rankings as at 1/1/09
RedCardinal.ie – 130,869
Beaut.ie – 146,638
PatPhelan.net – 164,196
BizGrowthNews.com – 195,195 (disclosure – this is my blog)
NB- your hyperlink for Bock the Robber from the image is missing .com
Krisna,
Thanks for taking the time to provide the blog links and traffic rankings – I’ve updated the .csv file for anyone who’s interested.
Also, thanks for the heads up on the link to Bocks page – all fixed now!
Happy New Year,
Paul.
You got any figures for The Irish Times blogs? I would have thought they’d be in the Top 20
Thanks for the mention, but my blog is at http://www.mneylon.com/blog – I don’t have mneylon.ie yet :)
Michele
Hi Shauna,
Alexa only provides traffic stats for the top level domain, so there’s no way to seperate out the stats for individual blogs on the irishtime.com domain.
Cheers,
Paul.
Hi Michele,
Sorry about that, my only excuse is that after 179 blogs I was probably a bit crossed-eyed.
I’ve updated the link.
Happy New Year,
Paul.
“Alexa only provides traffic stats for the top level domain, so there’s no way to seperate out the stats for individual blogs on the irishtime.com domain.”
So really, these are just the Top 20 most visited blogs of the blogs you have checked? Very misleading post
Hi Shauna,
If you read the full post, you’ll see that I explicitly stated there were limitations: namely that I checked 179 blogs, that the list was not exhaustive, and that not all the blogs I checked could be ranked.
No matter what method used to determine rankings of this nature, there are limitations. Unless each blog makes their stats publicly available, there will never be a truly definitive list.
Like I said in my post, the above rankings are a general indication only.
Cheers,
Paul.
Good man, Paul. I’m surprised to find myself in such good company. Normally, I tend to hang around with a much scruffier class of individual.
Thanks Bock!
Just goes to show that cream always rises to the top!
Happy New Year,
Paul.
Paul,
this is a great post. I know you’ve stated limitations ( which some people couldn’t be added reading) but for myself being so new to the blog scene and all, it’s good to have some starting point of bloggers to sub to. I look forward to subbing to all in the list ( had many already ) as well as the others in the comments. This quick note is to say thanks for your work. Joe
*added = arsed ( stupid iPhone autocorrection)
Thanks Joe.
Working on this really showed me how many great Irish Blogs there are out there, and how many people were dedicated to making the Irish blogging scene as good as it possibly can be.
I’m working on extending the list, so anyone who has blogs that they’d like to add to the list, let me know in the comments.
Cheers,
Paul.
Paul
Hi Paul – I’ve a blog over at webdistortion.com – my traffic rank is 115,040 at the minute. Love a backlink here if possible?
Regards,
Paul.
Hi Paul,
I’ve added you to the list. I haven’t updated the post with any of the new sites as of yet. I’m working on a WordPress plugin that will hopefully automate a lot of the work for me.
All the best,
Paul.
Such hard work – fair play, you’ve made one chicklet pretty darn happy I tells ya, accurate or not ;)
Thanks K8, I appreciate the support.
Happy New Year to you and yours,
Paul.
Your link to Donncha O’Caoimh’s blog is broken.
It should be http://ocaoimh.ie/
Thanks Niall,
Post updated.
Cheers,
Paul.
What a wonderful post. Such quality, and fine presentation. I thank you.
If I understand you, it hasn’t been possible to consider this blog because it’s hosted on blogs.ie – is that right? (Not that it would be high up the list.)
Hi Omaniblog,
Thanks for the comment!
I’ve added your blog to the list. Because Alexa doesn’t see the sub-domains on blogs.ie as separate sites, it will only provide a ranking for all the blogs hosted by blogs.ie.
I’m trying to see if I can work out some method to incorporate those blogs, when I do, I’ll update the list.
All the best,
Paul.
This made great reading, Paul. Thanks for the labour. It’s gratifying to see that so many people share a love of good content right across the spectrum. Seems quality counts after all.
You’re mad, you are! What a lot of work and what an interesting list.
Now mind, I’m delighted to be on this list, but my raw logs say I’m banging in about 900 page views a day, which is respectable but nothing to write home about. Beaut.ie is by comparison doing something like 30K a day, I think. (And good on them!)
Hi Sabrina,
Madness is what you make of it. Personally, I’m enjoying it :)
30k a day?! I don’t think I would do that in a year! Methinks it’s time to start writing about something else. Haute Couture for the Inner Geek perhaps?
All the best,
Paul.
Yup – according to the girls, who are as straight up as they come – they did 1,060,116 page views for 275,654 unique visitors in the 31 days of October, and their month-on-month growth has been quite steady so I’m sure the last quarter has been great for them.
Their Contact page has details.
Wow! That is amazing. I’m delighted they’re doing so well.
One of the best things about doing this post is the number of fantastic blogs I came across that I otherwise wouldn’t have seen.
Despite the lack of decent infrastructure, Irish bloggers are making an impact. I love the idea that there’s a whole community on-line willing to share ideas, support each other and raise their voices about the issues they believe in.