Analyst blogs

This page will be updated with the latest version of the top analyst blogs.

Link to February 08 Top 100 Analyst blogs (fully copy below)

Link to October 07 Top 100 Analyst blogs

Link to June 07 Top 50 Analyst blogs (updated)

The business case for blogging is something that many firms are still mooting. It would appear that this is also the situation for analyst firms – in an industry where opinion is a sought after commodity, it is no wonder that many companies are unsure whether to give away their IP in this format. Nevertheless, some people and striving ahead in this field as their readership soars and the number of people linking to their blogs increases. Below is the list of the top 100 analyst blogs as determined by PageRank, subscribers, recent inbound links, frequency and focus of posts as well as the number of comments.

Congratulations to those who made the top 100.


1	Web Strategy by Jeremiah	10	30	29	19	88
2	Compete Blog	12	30	26	19	87
3	James Governor’s MonkChips	14	29	19	19	80
4	The Groundswell	12	29	24	15	79
5	Message	12	24	24	19	79
6	tecosystems	12	29	17	17	75
7	CMS Watch Trends and Features	12	30	18	13	73
8	People Over Process	12	27	16	17	72
9	Being Peter Kim	10	23	18	17	68
10	Collaborative Thinking	10	26	16	16	68
11	Forrester’s Marketing Blog	12	21	19	13	65
12	Service-Oriented Architecture	14	18	17	15	64
13	Securosis.com	10	23	16	15	63
14	Dean Bubley’s Disruptive Wireless	10	18	14	19	61
15	James Bach’s Blog	10	26	13	12	61
16	451 CAOS Theory	10	18	15	17	60
17	JupiterResearch – Michael Gartenberg	12	17	17	13	59
18	isen.blog	12	17	16	13	58
19	StorageMojo	12	20	14	12	58
20	Hitwise Intelligence – Bill Tancer	10	17	17	13	57
21	From Information to Knowledge Management	12	18	14	12	56
22	Identity and Privacy Strategies Blog	12	14	14	16	56
23	Kelsey Group Blogs	10	17	14	15	55
24	MacehiterWard-Dutton	12	17	12	15	55
25	Jon Arnold’s Blog	12	17	13	13	55
26	Always On Real-Time Access	10	18	12	15	55
27	Contentblogger(TM) – News Commentary	12	17	14	12	55
28	Customer Experience Matters	10	17	14	13	54
29	DBMS2	12	17	13	12	54
30	Security Incite	10	11	15	17	53
31	The Net-Savvy Executive	8	18	14	12	52
32	IDC eXchange	12	18	10	12	52
33	Rob Enderle	12	11	14	15	51
34	Virtually Speaking	14	6	14	16	50
35	Dana Gardner’s BriefingsDirect	14	8	16	12	50
36	JupiterResearch – David Card	12	9	15	13	49
37	Text Technologies	10	15	11	13	49
38	Hitwise Intelligence – Heather Hopkins UK	12	8	15	15	49
39	The Enterprise System Spectator	12	12	12	12	48
40	Peter O’Kelly’s Reality Check	12	8	13	15	47
41	Illuminata Perspectives	12	14	11	11	47
42	Technology Pundits	10	18	8	11	47
43	Parks Associates	10	14	10	12	46
44	Open Source Unleashed – All Bets Off	12	9	12	12	45
45	Brandon Hall Analyst Blog – Janet Clarey	10	3	13	19	45
46	Application Platform Strategies Blog	10	12	12	11	45
47	Richi Blog	8	11	10	16	45
48	elemental links	10	14	10	11	44
49	Brandon Hall Analyst Blog – Tom Werner	10	12	10	12	44
50	Hitwise Intelligence – Robin Goad	10	6	17	11	44
51	BlogERP – Jim Holincheck’s HCM Software	10	9	11	13	43
52	Tech – Surf – Blog	10	5	14	15	43
53	Security and Risk Management	12	9	10	12	43
54	BriefingsDirect Transcripts	12	9	10	12	43
55	Contentblogger(TM) – Industry Events	10	17	7	9	43
56	Pattern Finder	10	6	13	13	42
57	JupiterResearch – Julie Ask	12	6	11	13	42
58	Z Trek: The Alan Zeichick	12	6	12	12	42
59	JupiterResearch – Mark Mulligan	12	6	13	11	42
60	JupiterResearch – David Schatsky	12	11	11	8	42
61	Cutter Blog	10	11	9	12	42
62	THINK IT Services	8	11	12	11	41
63	Irwin Lazar’s Real-time Blog	12	5	11	13	41
64	What’s on Tonight?	14	9	8	9	40
65	Greenmonk	8	6	10	16	40
66	Teblog	10	6	10	13	39
67	Amy Wohl’s	12	11	10	7	39
68	i-mode Business Strategy	12	14	7	7	39
69	BizTech Talk	10	6	11	12	39
70	KnowledgeForward	10	6	11	12	39
71	Security and Risk Management Strategies	10	5	11	13	39
72	Web Globalization News	10	6	12	11	39
73	Judith Hurwitz’ Weblog	10	6	12	11	39
74	Hitwise Intelligence – Sandra Hanchard	10	3	11	15	39
75	Travel Technology	10	9	9	11	39
76	Ceci N’est Pas Un Bob	12	5	11	11	38
77	The Collaboration Blog	10	11	8	9	38
78	Amy Wohl’s Opinions on SaaS	12	6	9	11	38
79	Gilbane Group Blog	12	2	12	12	38
80	Data Center Strategies Blog	10	5	11	12	38
81	JupiterResearch – Nate Elliott	12	3	11	11	37
82	A Software Insider’s Point of View	10	3	10	13	36
83	Freeform Comment	10	2	10	15	36
84	Steve’s IT Rants	8	9	12	7	36
85	Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog	8	5	11	12	36
86	JupiterResearch – Ian Fogg	12	2	10	12	36
87	BriefingsDirect	8	8	8	12	36
88	TeleGeography News and Analysis	12	5	7	12	36
89	E-Communications and Community	10	5	10	11	35
90	doingITbetter	10	6	8	11	35
91	Dan Keldsen	10	2	11	12	35
92	Richard Nantel	10	5	8	12	35
93	Analyst Blogs – Dave Mercer	8	3	7	16	34
94	JupiterResearch – Barry Parr	12	2	8	12	34
95	The Monash Report	10	5	8	11	33
96	Out of the Box	6	6	9	12	33
97	Ironick	10	3	8	12	33
98	Horses for Sources	8	2	10	13	33
99	Yankee Group Blog	10	5	6	12	33
100	Enterprise Search Blog	12	2	9	9	32

Blogs that didn’t make the top 100 but are worth watching: Birdahonk, A Springboard to Services, Robin Bloor’s Blog: have Mac will blog, Holway’s HotViews and Keeping IT Grounded. These blogs are relatively new and probably would feature higher if their Google PageRank was up-to-date. Thoughts When I first compiled the list if top analyst blogs, I was at surprised at the sheer quantity out there and yet also shocked at how some of the larger ‘Tier 1’ firms have taken only tentative steps in this space. What can be seen though is that the blogs that tend to be most successful have a few underlying themes, namely:

Topics – analysts who specialise in social media unsurprisingly dominate the top 10.
Companies – firms like Forrester, RedMonk continue to have a loud voice. Whereas IDC and Gartner fail to have a regular dialogue
People – individuals like Jeremiah Owyang (new entry at number 1 – well done) are bigger than the firms they are part of.
Comments – one of the main differences between offline and online media is the ability to have conversations with an audience. Analyst reports are typical of this one-way dialogue. It is surprising therefore when companies such as Jupiter (who have 23 bloggers) don’t allow their readers to get involved.
Frequency and focus – last year Gartner predicted that “that the number of active bloggers would hit its all-time high in 2007, levelling out soon thereafter”. There is some truth in this – whilst compiling this league table it was evident that some blogs that previously made the top 100 hadn’t been updated for well over 2 months. I have scored blogs higher if they stay relevant and posts are made frequently.

Methodology

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.

Google Reader Subscribers (0 to 10) – Google reader lists the total number of subscribers to a blog. I believe this is a more realistic number to that which Bloglines provides. Mihai Parparita confirms that “these numbers include subscribers across all Google services”. To account for people using other readers (e.g. Newsgator) it has been suggested that this number is multiplied by 3. Subscriber ranges were determined (i.e. more than 20, more than 30, etc.) and each range was assigned a number (0 to 20) that was used as part of the algorithm.

Technorati Ranking (0 to 10) – 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 Google Reader Subscribers value, and each range was assigned a number (0 to 30) that was used as part of the algorithm. Where people scored the same total score, the blog that had the highest Technorati authority gained the higher ranking.

Technobabble Points (0 to 10) – As the only personal subjective measure in the algorithm, 0 to 10 opinion points were assigned to each blog. I value frequent, relevant, creative and high-quality content with a good number of comments.

Weighting – Each specific variable listed above was given a standard score out of 10. Using a weighting scale I varied the importance of the each metric to establish a blogs total score. For the table listed above the following weightings were used:

Google PageRank	20%
Google Reader Subscribers	30%
Technorati	30%
Technobabble (content/frequency/comments)	20%

Additional reading: Analyst blogging – is it worth it? This league table was inspired by Todd And’s Power 150, a ranking of the top English-language marketing blogs developed by Todd Andrlik. My thanks to Tekrati for use of their blog directory.