By Nitya

Jun 3, 2009 10:00pm

Who’s Who in the Political Blogosphere?

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: It’s crowded out there in the political blogosphere — and there are as many ways to judge influence as there bloggers who stand ready to judge politicians.But here’s an interesting tool I recently came across: From Wikio.com, it’s a ranking of political blogs — emanating from everywhere from living rooms, mainstream media organizations, and the White House. The rankings are compiled based on links from other blogs — with extra weight given to blogs that rank higher via Wikio’s formulas, and based on how recently an item is published. Blog rolls aren’t taken into account, so only fresh postings impact the rankings. http://www.wikio.com/about-us One of the intriguing aspects of this list is that it puts everyone in the same pot. The list has mainstream media blogs — from ABC News, CNN, The New York Times, and others — alongside well-known partisan bloggers — Michelle Malkin, FireDogLake — and even government-run bloggers, like WhiteHouse.gov’s. We got a sneak peek at the latest rankings — due to be published Friday — below. It’s a fun list to analyze: Huffington Post has the top spot, with the liberal Center for American Progress’ Think Progress and the conservative National Review’s The Corner right behind. My colleague Jake Tapper’s Political Punch blog also cracks the Top 10. The Note — which launched as a blog in December, after serving only as a morning tipsheet before that — is No. 30 (and climbing); George Stephanopoulos’ Bottom Line blog is No. 39, and the now-discontinued Political Radar blog is still No. 40, because of (presumably) older links to the site. Here’s the Top 100:
1The Huffington Post
2Think Progress
3The Corner
4Political Ticker – CNN
5The Daily Dish
6Political Punch
7Michelle Malkin
8Instapundit.com
9Talking Points Memo
10Political Animal
11Firedoglake
12Daily Kos
13Crooks and Liars
14fivethirtyeight
15NewsBusters
16The Caucus – New York Times blog
17Gateway Pundit
18Power Line
19White House.gov Blog Feed
20Michael Goldfarb – The Blog – The Weekly Standard
21The Plank
22AMERICAblog
23Reason Magazine – Hit & Run
24The Volokh Conspiracy
25Balloon Juice
26Washington Wire – WSJ.com
27Marginal Revolution
28Swampland
29Glenn Greenwald
30The Note
31Atlas Shrugs
32Hullabaloo
33Wonkette
34Eschaton
35Political Wire
36Jihad Watch
37Lynn Sweet
38The Jawa Report
39George's Bottom Line
40Political Radar – ABC Blog
41The Next Right
42forward mov ement
43Don Surber
44MyDD
45JammieWearingFool
46Patterico's Pontifications
47iowahawk
48The Blog
49Stop the ACLU
50Redstate – Conservative News and Community
51Townhall.com
52FP Passport
53The Washington Note
54TalkLeft
55JustOneMinute
56Ross Douthat
57Outside the Beltway
58Sweetness & Light
59The Nation Blogs
60Riehl World View
61DownWithTyranny!
62Flopping Aces
63Oliver Willis
64Gay Patriot
65The Buzz Florida Politics
66Global Voices Online
67Michael J. Totten
68jillstanek.com
69Roger L. Simon
70Moonbattery
71American Power
72PollingReport.com
73Capitol confidential
74GamePolitics.com
75The Brad Blog
76YID With LID
77Debbie Schlussel
78Confederate Yankee
79The Club for Growth
80The Belmont Club
81Newshoggers
82Soccer Dad
83Say Anything
84News Hounds
85Founding Bloggers
86the albany project
87The Liberty Papers
88The Anonymous Liberal
89Mother, May I Sleep with Treacher?
90Jack and Jill Politics
91Burnt Orange Report
92PoliGazette
93The Radio Equalizer: Brian Maloney
94Obama HQ
95The LRC Blog
96ScrappleFace
97Sister Toldjah
98The Strata-Sphere
99The Sideshow
100Naked Politics

Ranking by Wikio.

User Comments

The Note is much better than the blabber on this list (and better than the decent reporting) as it is unbiased and does not promote any particular agenda. Facts are facts but most blogs are distortions of the truth. The Note attempts to get to the truth.

Posted by: Steven | June 4, 2009, 10:01 am 10:01 am

Ummmmm… you might not want to promote such an absurd ranking system that has massive and obvious flaws. Take this for example:
Hotair doesn’t make last month or this months list.
According to the methodology of this flawed ranking system that means that Hot Air received far less and far less important links than whatever the hell “the slideshow” is.
Now… lets compare the traffic of Hot Air and the slideshow according to sitemeter (which both sites use).
Visitors for the slideshow today: 577
Visitors for Hot Air today: 296,439
Yea… please retract this posting and be careful not to use random ranking systems you find while stumbling around the internet in the future.

Posted by: College Politico | June 4, 2009, 2:13 pm 2:13 pm

Why was Hotair. left off the list?

Posted by: John | June 4, 2009, 2:15 pm 2:15 pm

As someone who’s on that list, I can tell you it’s completely worthless if HotAir isn’t on it. It’s bad enough that Oliver Willis is on it, let alone my blog.

Posted by: Jim Treacher | June 4, 2009, 2:46 pm 2:46 pm

That list is an embarassment. Not only is HotAir not on it, as much as I luv me some Treacher, he is mostly on Twitter now, and rarely updates. I see several other glaring mistakes.Where’s Ace of Spades HQ? Take that mess down.

Posted by: di butler | June 4, 2009, 3:58 pm 3:58 pm

Yeah….it’s kind of ridiculous that you don’t have Hot Air or Ace of Spades HQ on your list. Like really ridiculous. For the left side of the equation, why no Ben Smith of Politico?

Posted by: yumyum | June 4, 2009, 4:52 pm 4:52 pm

“Hotair isn’t that good of a blog. Lots of hatespeech and snottiness, not a lot of substance.”
Like there’s not hate a Huffpo or KOS. ‘Good’ is in the eye of the beholder. It’s good to me. On my top 3.

Posted by: scott | June 4, 2009, 5:01 pm 5:01 pm

I call BS on this list. No Ace of Spades HQ in the top 100???? Really???

Posted by: CDR M | June 4, 2009, 5:07 pm 5:07 pm

Come on..I read many of these blogs on a regular basis, but none so often as Hot Air. How could it not be on the list?

Posted by: Priscilla | June 4, 2009, 5:45 pm 5:45 pm

You give Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs #31 but leave off Charles (Mini-Andrew Sullivan) Johnson’s Little Green Footballs?
You gonna give him a stroke, man~! Good on ya!

Posted by: serr8d | June 4, 2009, 6:01 pm 6:01 pm

Pure,unadulterated,horse hockey.

Posted by: daryl | June 4, 2009, 6:24 pm 6:24 pm

Any list that doesn’t include IMAO or Ace Of Spades is a crock.

Posted by: Noah Bawdy | June 4, 2009, 6:28 pm 6:28 pm

Ace of Spades belongs on the list, but then a lot of good blogs are missing. Good to see that the pony-tailed turncoat isn’t listed but quite a few that he stabbed in the back are.

Posted by: Perseus | June 4, 2009, 7:09 pm 7:09 pm

Number five on this list is a man who actively promoted the theory that Bristol Palin is Trig Palin’s REAL mother. Even though Bristol gave birth to her own child LESS than 9 months after Trig’s birth.
As far as making a joke about that goes, let’s just say that Mr. Sullivan’s firsthand knowledge of the female reproductive system is a bit out of date, OK?

Posted by: Russ from Winterset | June 4, 2009, 7:30 pm 7:30 pm

Senior Political Reporter? You go 100 deep with no mention of Ace of Spades? That’s, uh, some mighty fine reporting their Ricky.

Posted by: Terry | June 4, 2009, 11:06 pm 11:06 pm

See, Jim Treacher? You should have used one of the name changes suggested at Ace of Spades and you would have finished higher. And I guess Charles hasn’t evolved enough to make the list.

Posted by: andy | June 4, 2009, 11:19 pm 11:19 pm

Wow…no LGF? Folks, he’s the guy who used Microsoft Word–single-handedly debunking the Bush TANG memo fraud perpetrated by CBS.
No Hot Air? Ed Morrissey, Michelle, Allahpundit dominate my RSS feed refresh mania.

Posted by: RB | June 5, 2009, 7:40 am 7:40 am

how could you leave off THE RETORT?!?

Posted by: nancz | June 5, 2009, 10:28 am 10:28 am

“Hotair isn’t that good of a blog. Lots of hatespeech and snottiness [...]”
Please provide a single example of what you think constitutes “hatespeech” at HotAir. Go ahead, we’ll wait.

Posted by: Alex | June 5, 2009, 11:39 am 11:39 am

Love it or hate it, Hot Air has the traffic. To leave it off is at best sloppy, and at worst disingenuous.

Posted by: Mike | June 5, 2009, 12:22 pm 12:22 pm

Great comments! Yeah, it’s probably not a good idea to put up a column about some random blog ranking you found on the internet without doing a bit of independent research to make sure it isn’t flat out stupid.

Posted by: tim maguire | June 5, 2009, 2:17 pm 2:17 pm

Hot Air is in our database, at number 32 in the overall rankings, which would put it 21st in Politics. The reason it didn’t appear there was because it had not been assigned the right category. That’s been fixed so Hot Air will be in the Political ranking as of next month.
Ace was indexed but we were not capturing the latest RSS feed. We now are, so that too should be ok as of next month.
IMAO we’ve now added, thanks to your comments.
If you have any more suggestions for blogs you think are missing please let us know; you can submit them via our site.
Thanks for all help. We just do not know the Political blogosphere the way you guys do so we really want your feedback.
Dan
Wikio

Posted by: Dan @ Wikio | June 5, 2009, 2:26 pm 2:26 pm

A few thins about this erroneous and disingenous listing:
This is NOT A LIST OF THE TOP POLITICAL BLOGS. It is a list blogs that submit the most articles to a website wikio.
-Huffington Post is mainly a news aggregator website. It’s in line with drudge.com. If HuffoPo is on this list, then so should Drudge.
-ThinkProgress ia a George Soros donation funded blog in which each of the authors, Satyam Khanna, Faiz Shakir, Ben, Ian, and Amanda are paid for drumming up antiRepublican matter. Many blogs like Gateway Pundit are not funded and all and are mainly supported by ONE author.
-HotAir dot com is one of the most popular conservative blogs out there with hundreds of thousands of hits. Its not even mentioned on this list.
Putting HuffoPo in line with other blogs is like putting ABC News inline with your daily high school newspaper.
Final verdict: this list is garbage.

Posted by: barbara | June 5, 2009, 2:29 pm 2:29 pm

“See, Jim Treacher? You should have used one of the name changes suggested at Ace of Spades”
I did! Well, I was the one who suggested it, but still.

Posted by: Jim Treacher | June 5, 2009, 2:39 pm 2:39 pm

How could you not include a site that supports the people and not politicians?

Posted by: FeFe | June 6, 2009, 3:27 pm 3:27 pm

I was shocked that Ace of Spades was not in the top 10.
But not in the top 100? That alone makes the list invalid.

Posted by: arminius | June 6, 2009, 6:38 pm 6:38 pm

I have serious doubts about the methodology of this study since I have never heard of two-thirds of these web sites.

Posted by: bartlettb | June 6, 2009, 7:32 pm 7:32 pm

Lovely, I guess you couldn’t not include the Daily Kos, a hate speech site which takes glee in the death of Americans, and FireDogLake, home of Jane Hamsher, an outspoken racist and bigot.
Oh, well, I guess the continued success of these blogs proves that there is market for the lowest common denominator.

Posted by: Stuart Goldman | June 6, 2009, 8:23 pm 8:23 pm

Sorry guys but missing Hot Air and Ace is a major #Fail. Go to the end of the line.

Posted by: Charlie Norris | June 6, 2009, 8:26 pm 8:26 pm

Where’s Biff’s Place???
Love,
Biff

Posted by: biff | June 6, 2009, 9:21 pm 9:21 pm

This ranking is about as worthwhile as… ABC News!
Did Instapundit link this garbage because they list him at #8?
Cheap play Glenn. They should have you at number five anyway (in over-write mode).

Posted by: Alec Rawls | June 6, 2009, 10:31 pm 10:31 pm

lynn sweet?

Posted by: richard monahan | June 6, 2009, 10:44 pm 10:44 pm

No HotAir but, “the now-discontinued Political Radar blog is still No. 40, because of (presumably) older links to the site.” Haaaaaaaaaa! So what should be a top 5 is not on the list, but a discontinued blog is still #40? Why am i even reading this abcnews blog?

Posted by: Falafal Al Kabob | June 6, 2009, 10:55 pm 10:55 pm

wow tons of hotair readers here.
Daily Kos at 12. LOL.
Really the conservative blogs in the top ten are funny.

Posted by: Brian | June 6, 2009, 11:11 pm 11:11 pm

You people don’t really expect the MSM to get a list of ANYthing on the Internet right, do you?
Much less a list of hated blogs.

Posted by: FUBAR | June 7, 2009, 9:24 pm 9:24 pm

This list minus Ace of Spades HQ, is a 5 pound bag of fail.

Posted by: UncleFacts | June 7, 2009, 10:31 pm 10:31 pm

Any list that doesn’t include Brian Dennehy is bogus. Not Bill & Ted bogus, full-on, weapons-grade Spicoli bogus.

Posted by: IllTemperedCur | June 7, 2009, 11:02 pm 11:02 pm

Hey, don’t include me in this. I don’t have the time to blog on politics. I’m too busy filming my next blockbuster movie, Titanic 2: Iceberg Boogaloo.

Posted by: Brian Dennehy | June 8, 2009, 12:05 am 12:05 am

Hey bro, how many ways can you say “be excellent to each other” in a blog?

Posted by: Bill & Ted | June 8, 2009, 12:18 am 12:18 am

You know, blog rankings are bogus without rules; so if we don’t get some cool rules ourselves – pronto – we’ll just be bogus too! Get it?

Posted by: Spicoli | June 8, 2009, 12:24 am 12:24 am

I, for one, would like to see the dartboard you threw at to create this list. If HotAir or Ace of Spades were on the bulls-eye then the list makes sense because there’s no way this post gets anywhere near hitting the mark.

Posted by: Advocate for Change | June 10, 2009, 2:05 am 2:05 am

wow, this was a great article! nice job!

Posted by: Sarah | January 2, 2011, 11:37 pm 11:37 pm

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