Top 50 analyst blogs- updated

20Jun07

This league table is a global ranking of the top 50 English-language analyst blogs.

Edit (June 21) – I will keep this page updated with major changes to the league table due to blogs being missed (as with Stowe Boyd) or quantitative measures being updated (as with Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff). The next major update will be published next quarter.

A copy of the top 50 analyst blogs can be downloaded here.

xxx	Analyst	Company
1	Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff	Forrester	6	20	30	12	68
2	Stowe Boyd	/Message	6	18	30	14	68
3	James Governor	RedMonk	7	18	26	14	65
4	Stephen O’Grady	RedMonk	7	16	23	14	60
5	CMS Watch Analysts	CMS Watch	6	17	22	14	59
6	Michael Coté	RedMonk	6	12	21	14	53
7	Mike Rothman	Security Incite	6	12	21	14	53
8	Heather Hopkins	Hitwise	6	10	23	13	52
9	Marketing	Forrester	6	13	20	13	52
10	Shore Communications Analysts	Shore Communications	6	12	20	14	52
11	David Card	Jupiter Research	6	13	19	14	52
12	Bill Tancer	Hitwise	6	13	21	11	51
13	LeeAnn Prescott	Hitwise	6	9	23	12	50
14	Dean Bubley’s Disruptive Wireless	Disruptive Analysis	5	12	19	14	50
15	Mike Gotta	Burton Group	5	11	20	14	50
16	451 Group Analysts	The 451 Group	6	11	17	14	48
17	Mark Mulligan	Jupiter Research	6	8	15	14	43
18	Devices, Media & the future of Everything	Forrester	6	11	20	5	42
19	Nate Elliott	Jupiter Research	7	12	12	9	40
20	IT Business Alignment	MWD	6	8	13	13	40
21	Joseph Laszlo	Jupiter Research	6	11	14	8	39
22	Kelsey Group Analysts	The Kelsey Group	5	9	11	14	39
23	Julie Ask	Jupiter Research	6	8	12	12	38
24	Ian Fogg	Jupiter Research	6	9	12	11	38
25	Identity and Privacy	Burton Group	5	5	16	9	35
26	Jeff Kaplan	THINKstrategies	5	5	12	12	34
27	Irwin Lazar	Nemertes Research	6	7	12	9	34
28	Freeform Comment	Freeform Dynamics	6	5	13	8	32
29	Sandra Hanchard	Hitwise	6	6	12	8	32
30	Steve’s IT Rants	Enterprise Strategy Group	6	0	12	13	31
31	Information Management	Forrester	6	2	10	13	31
32	David Schatsky	Jupiter Research	6	6	12	6	30
33	Diane Clarkson	Jupiter Research	6	6	12	5	29
34	Wireless	ABI Research	6	0	12	10	28
35	Application Platform	Burton Group	5	5	10	8	28
36	Insecure about Security	Enterprise Strategy Group	6	5	5	12	28
37	Barry Parr	Jupiter Research	6	0	13	9	28
38	Joe Wilcox	Jupiter Research	6	5	12	5	28
39	Stor Wars	Enterprise Strategy Group	6	0	12	9	27
40	Digital Home	ABI Research	6	5	4	10	25
41	Bricks to clicks: The details of retail	Forrester	6	3	10	5	24
42	IDEAS Insights	Ideas International	5	0	10	9	24
43	Security and Risk Management	Forrester	6	2	3	12	23
44	Unconventional Thinking	Gartner	5	8	0	10	23
45	Retail Systems Alert Group Analysts	Retail Systems Alert Group	6	5	3	9	23
46	Mainstream Matters	Freeform Dynamics	2	0	12	8	22
47	Media	Gartner	3	7	0	12	22
48	Data Center	Burton Group	0	1	11	9	21
49	Ron Exler	Robert Frances Group	6	1	6	8	21
50	Security and Risk Management	Burton Group	5	1	5	9	20

There has been quite a lot of discussion around the validity of such a ‘league table’. However, as you can see from the methodology 80% of a blog’s score is based upon quatitative values from Google (measuring pagerank), Bloglines (measuring subscribers) and Technorati (measuring links). Where people have queried the subscriber numbers, this has often been due to only one of the blogs feeds being counted.

Perhaps the most interesting point is that this table shows how virtually all the analyst houses are taking this form of communication seriously. Some have invested heavily in it, have made great progress and raised their profile considerably. Others have made only token efforts – my question to them is how reliable can their advice be in this area if they haven’t mastered it themselves. This point remains open to debate and I will draw my conclusions later.

This league table will be reviewed and republished every quarter. Marks are based on the following criteria:

Google PageRank (0 to 10) – Google PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that interprets web links and assigns a numerical weighting (0 to 10) to each site. High-quality sites receive a higher PageRank. The ranking uses the actual PageRank as part of its algorithm.

Bloglines Subscribers (1 to 20) – Bloglines displays the amount of subscribers each blog has to its feed(s). Subscriber ranges were determined (i.e., more than 20, more than 30, etc.) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 20) that was used as part of the algorithm.

Technorati Ranking (1 to 30) – Technorati ranking relates the authority of a particular blog (via the number of sites pointing to it). The more link sources referencing your blog, the higher the Technorati ranking. Similar to the Bloglines Subscribers value, and each range was assigned a number (1 to 30) that was used as part of the algorithm.

Technobabble Points (1 to 15) – As the only subjective measure in the algorithm, 1 to 15 opinion points were assigned to each blog. I value frequent, relevant, creative and high-quality content with a good number of comments.

If you want to suggest a blog or report an error please let me know.

This league table was inspired by Todd And’s Power 150, a ranking of the top English-language marketing blogs developed by Todd Andrlik.

Technorati Tags: analyst relations, ar, blog, blogger, power 150, league table, technobabble top analyst blogs, analyst blog, top analyst blogs, analyst

Filed under: analyst relations, blogger relations, blogging, noteworthy, social media | 32 Comments

32 Responses to “Top 50 analyst blogs- updated”

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1 Irwin Lazar on June 21, 2007 said:

My own blog scored 40 points without the subjective evaluation – how are you selecting the blogs to evaluate (i suggest you use the list at tekrati.com as a starting point – i think you are missing a lot of great analyst blogs (stowe boyd, michael sampson, mike gotta) to name a few.

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2 Jonny on June 21, 2007 said:

Thanks Irwin for your comment. I anticipated a few blogs being missed out in the table (from the 200 I analysed) which is why I published an amended version after a couple of days.
Your blog scored 34 points (well done but not sure how you thought it should score 40 though). For your guidance, your breakdown was 6-7-12-9.
I will edit this entry to show additional blogs and their corresponding position should they enter the top 50.

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3 Mike Gotta on June 21, 2007 said:

Thanks for the effort to create a framework for all this. Curious though as to where my blog fits…

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4 Dean Bubley on June 21, 2007 said:

Jonny, thanks for the analysis & ranking, especially your own Technobabble points.

The thing I find interesting is that I eschew most of the usual trendy “blogging furniture” like Digg & tagging & del.icio.us and that hyper-annoying thing where linked pages show up as thumbnails. I’ve got no idea what Technorati is, nor who subscribes to Bloglines or why. I guess I could probably exploit all these cool blogosphere tools, and work on my template/blogroll to improve my number of inbound links and influence my ranking. But a straw poll of my blog’s readers told me that most use RSS readers and don’t care about this stuff anyway, just the raw content.

Any thoughts or recommendations? Do you think it’s worth me investing time in getting to grips with all the fancy stuff?

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5 Pete on June 22, 2007 said:

Hi Jonny,

Great stuff! Love your point in an earlier post about analysts and their technology, i.e. “do as I say and not as I do.”

regards,
Pete

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6 Dennis Howlett on June 23, 2007 said:

How does Stowe qualify and where are the buy side people in this ‘analysis?’

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7 vinnie mirchandani on June 25, 2007 said:

Jonny, like your approach but as Dennis asks, without buy side metrics or weights you can get skewed results. As a former Gartner analyst and now a consultant who works wih CIOs, I always ask – how will what we blog about play with a corporate CIO?

see my comments

http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/2007/06/boardwalk-for-4.html

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8 Jonny on June 25, 2007 said:

First of all, thanks to everyone who has commented on the league table. There has been quite a few comments which I will try and answer in turn:

Irwin, Mike – you are now included in the updated table

Dean – Bells and Whistles.
You have a great blog. You have recognised that the most important thing is content. I too read your blog through a feed reader so the need for bells and whistles isn’t that important to me. Nevertheless, there are several tasks you can do that can considerably drive traffic to your site. What you do depends upon how important your blog is to gaining additional revenue. At the most complicated, this involves search engine optimisation/marketing to a very simple tools such as Digg. Why don’t we meet for a drink and talk this through?

Dennis #1 – Why does Stowe qualify?
This was a tough one as he wasn’t originally included. However, after corresponding with him, he explained that he was indeed a technology analyst and so should be included. I will review all submissions before the next update and add others and remove some if necessary.

Vinnie and Dennis #2 – Buy-side analysts.
This blog table represents all technology analysts. I have shown no bias towards either sell or buy-side. It is a mere fact of the market that most of the analysts make their money from vendors as oppose to enterprise buyers. This is not to deny the importance of buy-side analysts as they significantly impact purchasing decisions but there are simply fewer analyst blogs in this space.

Should the weighting differ to give more value to this group – this is an interesting question and enters the debate as to which are the tier 1 analysts? Vendor analyst houses like RedMonk provide a great service contributing to a vendors final messaging (which also impacts the market) in a different way to Gartner analysts giving specific micro advice to an enterprise buyer.

I would recommend you read this post which explains the arguments in greater detail.

On a final point, the jury is out in deciding your final question.

how will what we blog about play with a corporate CIO?

My answer would be, better to try with the possibility that it will have no effect, rather than not to try and be certain of it.

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9 vinnie mirchandani on June 26, 2007 said:

“It is a mere fact of the market that most of the analysts make their money from vendors as oppose to enterprise buyers. ” Used to not be true for Gartner or Forrester. If it is, the whole analyst market is corrupted – and merely an extension of vendor marketing. and if they do not umderstand buyer drivers, behavior, decision processes. are they really improving vendor marketing?

I am not saying don’t complie a list like yours. I am saying make it better by polling buyers, polling vendors about analysts who they perceive as influential with buyers, peer analyst input etc…because right now it’s more of a feel good list, with little correlation to influence in the buyer community.

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10 Jonny on June 26, 2007 said:

Vinnie, I am not saying the market is corrupted in anyway. Nor does the fact that vendors provide a great proportion of analyst revenue mean that they don’t understand buyer behaviour. What is important to realise though is that the analyst houses that have a strong buy-side customer base have a relatively poor track record in blogging (with the exception of Forrester).

Your point about polling other groups to understand who they see as the most influential is a strong point – and one that is undertaken in Edelman’s Trust barometer. In their most recent study, analysts were shown as the most trusted form of advisors. Further analysis will be undertaken about this to identify companies and individuals who are perceived to be the most influential.

However, the pure aim of this league table is not identify who are the most influential analysts but purely to identify which analysts have the most successful blogs. Currently this is decided by subscribers, links and content. I hope to publish further posts about influence and would be keen to hear your views.

Indeed, in your new role since leaving Gartner, do you consider yourself an analyst?

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11 vinnie mirchandani on June 26, 2007 said:

No, do not consider myself an analyst. I am an advisor to CIOs and CTOs. Spend time with 15-20 clients a year over 60 – 180 day projects…at Gartner it was much more transactional – 1 -2 hour interfaces with 1,000 customers a year. So breadth versus depth difference. At the individual client level, I am more influential now, at the market level no where near analyst level influence. But either way I believe buyers come before investors or vendors in the technology circle of life. And I emausre my blogs success from the buyer traffic and feedback I get from buyers.

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12 Frank Gilbane on June 29, 2007 said:

Great idea. Couple of comments: First, don’t forget us at Gilbane Group. We have 8 blogs, 6 of which are analyst blogs. Our largest blog is at http://gilbane.com/blog/ and has a page rank of 7 as does our main site home page at http://gilbane.com which servers as a portal to all our blogs. Second, it might also be useful to build a ranking that included the total numbers by analyst firm rather as a companion to the current table.

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13 Jonny on July 2, 2007 said:

Hi Frank

Thanks for your mail and sorry you were missed out. I have added your details to the ranking system and I am pleased to say that you have scored 34 points which would have put you in 29th place. Your actual score would have been much higher if your subscriber numbers matched your technorati ranking. This seems to be a common problem so I will check again shortly to see if things change.

Interesting suggestion as well regarding a ranking system that included the total numbers by analyst firm – I am considering tweeking the format for future versions so may do this but as yet I am undecided.

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14 Manoj Ranaweera on July 23, 2007 said:

Wonder where subject specialist blogs such as mine fit into this! Given the specialist nature, I will never be able to command such a high hit rate. Irony is that my blog normally gets to first page of Google for keyword “EIPP” without much of a problem.

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15 Jeremiah Owyang on September 11, 2007 said:

Great list

I’m joining Forrester as a Sr Analyst focused on Social Computing for the Interactive Marketer

Details here!
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/08/27/pursuing-the-web-strategy-mission-as-a-forrester-analyst/

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