How Fares the Smelly Web?

In the previous post, I explained why two sites were being dropped from the Solo Blog Index. Today, I introduce their replacements and review what’s happened since our last look at traffic rankings in the smelly blogosphere.

Our first new addition to the Solo Blog Index is BonkersAboutPerfume; the owner is Vanessa, who lives in Stafford, England and has been blogging since February 2008. The second is FragranceBouquet, run by Divina, a university student who has been blogging since April 2007. Welcome aboard!

The new sites were swapped in as of December 26, 2010. Here is the revised lineup of the Solo Blog Index, along with Alexa web traffic rankings from December 26, 2010 and the rankings as of today. The Solo Blog Index stood at 82 on December 26, and is at 86 today. (It began life, like all the indexes, at 100 on August 9, 2009.)



The index runs the gamut from highly-ranked, big-time sites down to the smaller blogs. The extensive range is a deliberate attempt to capture traffic trends at all sorts of sites. As usual, there is a lot of variability in traffic ranking over time among the solo blogs. Sorcery of Scent, for example, has been cruising the low 3 million range until suddenly losing altitude in the past two months. On the other hand, FirstNerve got back on its game after losing traffic to slow posting over Christmas and New Year’s.

Here is the Team Blog lineup; no changes have been made since the index began.



And here is the lineup of the Corporate and Community Blog Index, which has also remained unchanged since the beginning.



Alexa traffic rankings of sites in the Team and C&C indexes are much more stable than those in the Solo index. Why? Probably because they post more frequently.

Finally, look at how the Indexes have performed since our inspection on November 7, 2010.



The Team Blog Index, which has been higher than the others since January, 2010, slid below them in January 2011, bottomed out in late February, and climbed back to the top in April. This coincides with a ranking slump at PerfumeDaRosaNega.

The Solo Blog Index, which had been riding high, slumped this past month but is well within its normal range.

Meanwhile, the Corporate & Community Blog Index, which was near historic lows in November 2010, recovered nicely and has been steady though at non-spectacular levels.

For the moment, the smelly blogosphere seems to be chugging along just fine.