Pick And Choose

In a fit of mild pique over our refusal to use the URL of his website instead of the URL of his blog in our compiling of the S&F Top 50 classical music blog rankings, Ben of Classical Convert has retaliated by compiling his own four ranked lists of the Top 50 classical music blogs, each ranked list compiled using the same list of blogs (which list of blogs is NOT the same as the S&F Top 50), but each utilizing a different statistical data set to determine the rankings. The four data sets used are:

1: Google Backward Links (the same data set used for the S&F Top 50)
2: Technorati Authority rating
3: Google Reader (RSS aggregator) subscriptions
4: Bloglines (RSS aggregator) subscriptions

Kinda cool, actually, as long as one keeps in mind that two quite different and not-comparable things are being measured by these four data sets. Within the universe of classical music blogs, RSS aggregator subscriptions (Google Reader and Bloglines) are a measure of relative popularity while Google's Backward Links and Technorati's Authority rating are measures of relative importance. Without making comment here concerning the statistical soundness of any of these four methodologies for the purpose intended (concerning which we've commented in some detail and at some length on Google's Backward Links count and on Technorati's Authority rating in our S&F Top 50 Eligibility and Methodology), it's your choice as to which measure is most meaningful to you, and thanks are due Ben for giving us the choice irrespective of his reason for doing so.