Britain's weblogs: here come the Tories

Right-of-centre politics, football and sex: such is the intellectual diet of Britain's weblog readers, according to a chart doing the rounds at the moment.

Hitwise, a research company that monitors the usage of 500,000 websites, found that three of the top six weblogs read by British readers last week swung to the right.

In fourth place, after the Guardian's and BBC's collected blogs: Guido Fawkes, ever the source for parliamentary scandal. Today the site was occupied by defending the right of an Orange community affairs spokesman to write a "jokey" article defining as Islamophobic: "Anyone who objects to having their transport blown up on the way to work."

In fifth: Iain Dale, the one-time Conservative candidate and political commentator, today unhappy at news that the next Tory conference will be in Blackpool: "All I can say is that the Party must have got a bloody good deal."

And in sixth: Conservatives Home, a place for all things Tory: MP Ed Vaizey's third night in a homeless shelter anyone? "I've seen a little of both the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega of homelessness."

The three rightish sites, coming after the BBC's and Guardian Unlimited's platforms of dozens of weblogs and writers, have a claim to be this summer's best-read individual weblogs in the country.

Guido Fawkes said the contrast between what he described as left-leaning platform style sites and blogs written by right-of-centre individuals was one for media academics to explain. Sam Coates, the deputy editor of Conservatives Home and a student at Oxford Brookes University (and not The Times political correspondent), told us the three Tory sites reinforced each other's hits, with thousands of people moving from one to the other each day.

But he suggested there were wider forces at work as well: "Opposition parties are the great political innovators around the world," he said. "The Conservatives need innovative ways to spread their message. They feel a bit on the back foot because they're not in power."

As if to relax, after politics the list gives way to football. Arse Blog at number seven has emerged as an indispensable resource for Arsenal fans. Arseblogger, based in Barcelona, celebrated the news with a nudge for sponsors: "I can say is tell your friends to come and visit so that soon I can be number one and the plan for world domination, surreptitious and leisurely as it is, can proceed unabated," he wrote this morning.

Little Green Footballs, a leading conservative US weblog, is the only American entry in the top ten. It sits, a little uncomfortably perhaps, between Girl With A One Track Mind, a compulsive sex blog whose author, Zoe Margolis, has recently abandoned her anonymity, and The Superficial, a celebrity gossip site whose tagline "Because you're ugly" tells you almost everything you need to know.

For some perspective, and another way of measuring weblog popularity, try Technorati, which lists the internet's 100 most-linked to weblogs. From the Hitwise chart, only Guardian Unlimited makes the list, at 83.

Comments

[Ian]

"whose author, Zoe Margolis, has recently abandoned her anonymity"

Nice.
She didn't abandon her anonymity, the scumbag Nicholas Hellen from the Sunday Times outed her, despite (or likely because of) the obvious fallout for her career and social life.

[Guido Fawkes]

I asked Hitwise how they calculated their rankings.

Here is what Heather said :

"1. The Hitwise rankings are based on market share of internet visits from our sample of over 8.43 million UK internet users. We also report on page views and session duration - if you're interested...

2. I created a custom category of 25 blog sites. The market share reflects visits within that category. If you subscribe to Hitwise ( www.hitwise.co.uk) and see the 500,000+ sites we capture and create any custom category you want.

3. BBC and Guardian are not involved in categorising the sites. We have a team in Melbourne that handle this. So no, football, weather, etc should not be included in the aggregation.

I blogged on Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale's blogs a few weeks ago. Political influence does seem to be moving. Their blogs are both comfortably ahead of the party sites in share of visits and are growing fast. This while Parliament is in recess and the party conferences are still a way off."

[JonnyB]

How bizarre - I posted a comment on the 'outing' of The Girl yesterday, and it hasn't yet got through moderation. Perhaps I shouldn't have detailed your methods.

I'm with Tim on these figures. I think they may be explained by the huge traffic spikes generated when they mention one of their blogs on a TV or radio show.

Being reasonably closely involved in a similar area of web traffic measurement, I know how impossible it is to be accurate to any real degree.

[Rich]

“Girl With A One Track Mind, a compulsive sex blog whose author, Zoe Margolis, has recently abandoned her anonymity”

That’s a bit cheeky. Unless someone tells me different wasn't it the Times that forcibly outed The Girl?

[The Girl]

I think you'll find that I didn't "abandon" my anonymity; the Sunday Times newspaper ran an 'expose' 11 days ago, revealing my identity - against my wishes.

I hope you will allow this comment, or if not, that you will alter this blog post accordingly so that it is factually accurate.

Thank you.

[SuperClive]

"a compulsive sex blog whose author recently abandoned her anonymity"

Er, she didn't. The Sunday Times "outed" her.

Perhaps you should read her blog one day. It's actually pretty good.

[Tim Worstall]

Apologies, not quite sure I believe these numbers. Are we seriously supposed to believe that out of the however many millions (50? 60?) of blogs read by UK readers, the BBC’s blogs got 11% of total reading?
Sorry, simply don’t believe it. There’s something desperately wrong with that measurement metric.

[Heather Hopkins]

Sam, True - this table shows share of visits, not page views or session duration, which we (Hitwise) also reports on.

Measured by page views, Conservativehome.blogs.com did come out ahead of Guido. However, this may in part be due to to frequency of posts - rather than the share of audience. Both metrics are useful, but for different reasons.

[Sam Coates (Tory version)]

If I may point out, the Hitwise table reflects a mere snapshot of hits.

I know, for example, that in the month of July ConHome got 30,000 more page views than Guido (according to extreme tracking), although within that he had a lot more unique visitors.

Interestingly, we all had sizeable increases in hits in April - in the lead up to May's elections - which has largely been sustained.