Edelman and Technorati Detail the Most Influential Blogs in German, French and Italian

As we’ve all seen from Technorati’s latest State of the Blogosphere post, the conversation is indeed global. However, as you will soon see, it's very local too.

Two thirds of all blog posts are written in languages other than English. This is why Edelman and Technorati partnered earlier this year. The localized versions of Technorati in German, French and Italian are being pushed out to our teams this week. Now that we have them, we have learned a lot about the European blogosphere and how it differs from the US. More in this story from the Financial Times. (These sites will become available to the public next year.)

For starters, using Technorati’s data we have identified the top 100 bloggers who write in these three languages. We also compiled a list of the most influential UK bloggers we could identify using a far more subjective methodology. (It's difficult to sort out blogs originating from the UK vs. those from Australia and the US.) While these are the most prominent blogs written in Europe, in no way are they the only important ones. We compiled the list to learn about the bloggers in each region and how they operate. Edelman also conducted a separate survey on blog readership and activism.

For each top 100 list of local influencers we looked at: who are they, what they cover, how often they talk about multinationals/local companies. In addition, we zeroed in on the top 10 in each region to find out how often they link to each other, regional media and four key US media (CNN, NY Times, CNET, USA Today.) Here’s a snapshot of what we learned and a look at the lists (Excel file) - as of this week. The full results will be published later this year.

* The dialogue in each region  is fairly balkanized and reflects the national culture.

* A strong interest in technology-related topics pervades the blogosphere regardless of language with  22% of the top French blogs focused on the topic while technology focused  blogs are prevalent on the top German (25%) and Italian (11%) lists as well.     The most popular focus for  a Top 100 blog in Italian (43%) and French (30%) are so-called personal  journals, while a tech blogs are the most common category among top German  (25%) bloggers.

* Just like the U.S., there  is a good deal of interdependence between bloggers and mainstream media:   In Italian and German, the top 10 blogs link heavily to mainstream  media, though in France the Top Ten bloggers link to each other 29% more often  than they link to regional media.

* Specific, companies and  brands in Europe are discussed, but not nearly as often as in the US. However,  in both Europe and the US, there are similar levels of discussion in the  product categories such as cars.

So what’s this all mean?

* To influence the  influencers, you need to take both a local and a global view of the  conversation

* The dialogue in each region  is fairly balkanized and reflects the local culture and influences. However,  it is influenced by media and blogs in other countries

* Companies and brands are  discussed in European blogs, but not nearly as often as in the US or as  product categories are talked about

* Brands have a big  opportunity to become part of the conversation by listening and developing  programs

UPDATE:: Please note that these lists are in beta. Further, if you feel your blog belongs on the list, please follow Technorati's instructions to claim it and identify your language. Thanks!

Tags: technorati, edelman, germany, france, italy

Comments

[ludo]

Technorati alone cannot be used as a measure of the influence of a blog, as its link ranking system is subject to a lot of factors which have nothing to do with influence, popularity, or the number of readers.

Let's examine a few of the blogs in the (pretty outdated and partial) list of Italian blogs you link to.

* Blogosfere (#4) is the corporate blog of a nanopublishing company with more than 130 active blogs, most of them microblogs on very specific topics; its number of links is inflated by the networking effects of hundreds of blogs (its own, and the editors' own) cross-linking each other; and Blogosfere is not even the most successful and widely read Italian nanopublishing company;

* Roundhouse Kicks (#5) how can a blog that only publishes short messages (received by SMS and email) on Chuck Norris be influential?

* Robinik (#6), while it's a good representative of the right-wing political blogs, its ranking is heavily influenced by its use of blogrolling services;

* Sw4n (#8), like many other "top" blogs, owes its ranking mostly to the links placed on the free blog templates it offers for download; again, hardly influential

And the list could go on for a while...

To properly assess a blog influence, the Technorati rankings have to be compounded by other indicators, like Google's PageRank, Google and Yahoo! backlinks, FeedBurner circulation, etc. That's what we are doing for the Italian blogosphere at http://top100.qix.it/metrics/ and for the Spanish blogosphere at http://top.blogs.es/ As you can see our own results are very different from the straight ones from Technorati (which btw are available on our sites, with a more complete list of blogs than the one you link to, and updated daily).

[eio]

For what I know about the italian blogosphere, this study is worth a laugh (and just a laugh).

I agree with ludo on all points.

LOL

[Bruno Ribeiro]

I have to agree with ludo: measuring a blog influence can't depend only on a single factor.

I recently conducted a study in the portuguese blogosphere to identify the most influential blogs with a similar aproach as the one used in http://top100.quix.it; albeit less comprehensive covering only 102 blogs as I'm collecting data "by hand", so to speak.

To do that I collected data from each blog in a number of topics like: average of unique visitors; Technorati links; Google Pagerank; Google, Yahoo!, Blogpulse, Icerocket and Alexa backlinks…

The Technorati approach is a good indicator, but it only focus in a single aspect.

On another hand, I think the regional approach Technorati is adopting is an excellent idea and should be extended to other languages; or at least it should have the possibility to restrain search and popularity to blogs of a given geographical zone. As it going to implement French, German and Italian lists, why not an European one?

[Rafael Slonik]

How can i get information about the top brazillian blogs at Technorati?
Is there a way to know it?

[Sébastien Billard]

This study don't reveal anything, apart confirming that well known bloggers are well known...

I don't see why quoting brand and medias is a sign of influence. The number of references by other people is a better indicator, but should be confronted with other datas, like how many subscribers in big agregators like Bloglines, how many pages index in Del.icio.us etc.

That was the point of one of my articles : http://s.billard.free.fr/referencement/index.php?2006/06/06/249-evaluer-la-popularite-reelle-dun-blog

And Technorati is far for being reliable : in the last 10 min my position varied by several thousands, going up and down. Many citations by other blogs are not counted.

[Paulo Querido]

Nopes. Technorati is not fiable. There are a lot of blogs Technorati omits. Doesn't care about. I know as my blog is no more listed by Technorati. Technorati crawlers visit it, I DO ping Technorati -- and nothing.
I wrote 3 times -- THREE TIMES -- to technorati help desk. They don't fucking care. Why should I back up Technorati? Not anymore. No. On the contrary, as soon as I have the time, I will open a blog dedicated to Technorati failure in measuring the blogosphere.

[Sw4n]

Thanks for all.

@Paulo, I had the same problem. I wrote to Janice, (you can find her blog googlin' a little bit), that is a member of technorati's staff. She solved all my problems with pings.

Excuses for my english,

Sw4n, Italy.

[Felix]

Also, while the German "BILDblog" has the name "blog" in it, is isn't acutally one. There is no possibiliy to comment or see trackbacks. It is basically a list of stories / notes on a German newspaper, that maybe looks like a blog but isn't. It's still very good, though.

[ix]

you got the wrong url for "wirres.net". if you had gotten the right one ("wirres.net" instead of "wirres.net/article"), the german top ten would look slightly different.

[annnieday]

arrêtez de regarder votre nombril et de jouer à qui influence qui. ceci ne relève que d'une démarche égocentrée et donc sans intérêt ... à part pour votre ego
Désolée, mais je n'ai ni l'envie ni le temps de traduire cela en anglais, allemand, italien, ou toute autre langue sui serait pertinente.

[CountZero / 4null4.de]

I am really impressed to find myself among the German Top10 list. I'd never thought of being that "important" ;)
Unfortunately the URL has been stated wrong: the correct one is 4null4.de - the second "L" matters; the name is a nerdy joke on the most commonly known error on the net - 404, page not found.

[Nicola Mattina]

Steve, I have more than a doubt about this study. In the Italian list there are at least a couple of blogs that I can find hardly influential:

#88 http://pornoromantica.splinder.com
This closed on may, 09, 2006 and the title of the most popular posts sounds like: "10 tips to leak the pussy", "the perfect blowjob"...

#187 http://www.bloggers.it/semplicementeliberale
This is an error page.

[barbara]

eine derart schlecht recherchierte liste hat hier im deutschsprachigen raum noch keiner gesehen.

ab in den mülleimer damit.

cc lizenz fürs karma? peinlich.

[Nicole Simon]

Steve, I hope you do not rely business or recommendation on this kind of ranking.

I am sorry, but these results, these obvious errors make me want to ask if that really is the kind of study you want to send out?

And lets not even go into your measurements and what defines an important blog, it starts right away with the fact that technorati does not list all german blogs accordingly nor does it capture the real amount of linkage.

Therefor it is no wonder that technical topics are so highly ranked - it is basicly for the fact that those kind of bloggers know much more about technical stuff.

For the rest of the description of what you do with it and how you compare it to the US you fall for something I hate on Americans: The thought that what happens in the US is the mother of how all things ought to be happening.

I am sorry, but if you basically are ignoring facts especially around the cultural side of a medium like blogging as well as the impact of different technologies and the spread of them in a country like germany and want to 'just' bring it back down to technorati numbers and build from there on ...

Just one example for myself - I blog more in english about the topics because my readers (if they are german) do read both languages. I do not need to translate it, because the interested peer group reads this in either language.

So far it looks mostly like "not have done your homework". Well as I said in the beginning: I hope you are not basing business on this, you might be in for a big disappointment.

[Steeven]

Where is the Brad-Pitt's blog?!

[Graziano]

Im 58° in Italy, is possible?

[Gabi]

I´ m a bit wondering that you can stand the mistakes on the german graphics. there are lots of jokes in german blogs that two of ten blogs are written wrong. And nobody told you that and your interns aren´ t able to resolve the problem?

[ron]

I'm so glad to be there, thanks to all those naked pictures of Wentworth Miller...

[Tony Siino]

Italian newspaper "Corriere della Sera" does mistakes about Beppe Grillo.

[Thomas Knuewer]

Unfortunately Technorati has many faults. Faults, it could know about, if the management would care about reading blogs.

If someone wants to see a more realistic list of the German top 100 blogs, take a look at the Deutsche Blog Charts, which are produced as a hobby from a blogger. The numbers are from Technorati, too - but he's errasing obvious faults: http://www.deutscheblogcharts.de

Steve, if you count it out, you will see that there are 34 blogs in the top 100, which are not in your list. 34 of 100!

Here are some details (in German):
http://www.popkulturjunkie.de/wp/?p=2628

My personal favorit of shame in the Edelman-list is ranked as 235: macuser.de/forum
Didn't anyone think this could be, well, a FORUM?

[Nicole Simon]

As Thomas is making the point - we are not talking about really a lot of different things to do after checking sites out.

There are the ones which just scream at you - as with the forum - that takes a day maximum with 250.

And the ones which are a bit more subtle but visible as well - like the linked sites of blog themes - you take some time longer.

From a company like Edelman I would have expected professional work. And with that I expect a better approach to such a study than you have provided in there.

[Gabi]

Congratiolations, you changed the german graphic. Shouldn´ t it be transparent that there is now another list with other resoluts than two days ago? With two big changes in one Top10?

You posted an update-note but without communicating another result. By the way: The blog netzpolitik.org is still written wrong. You still missed the second "i".

[Steve Rubel]

Gabi, you're right. I did update the graphic based on new data. - steve

[nessuno77]

link ME ahahahah(it's a joke)

[Community Micro Blogging Fan]

Great news and a nice Site!

[Bernd]

Möchtet Ihr euch an der Diskussion oder an Konzepten beteiligen? Siehe hier: http://www.deutschland-debatte.de/2007/11/30/die-blog-nabelschau-i/. Es geht mir nicht um Traffic, ich bin Überzeugungs"täter"! Bitte helft mit, diesen Link zu verteilen. Danke