Web Strategy Analysis (Part 1/2): Homepage Breakdown of the top 10 Blogs
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Please read part 2: A break down the top personal tech blogs, notice the difference in advertising use.
Analysis Purpose
To analyze the homepage web strategies of the top blogs in the world
Background
We’re all fascinated and drawn to some of the world’s top blogs, according to incoming links, Technorati has listed the top 10 blogs. (Although that’s not the best way to determine authority) How do blogs get links to them? They do one of two things 1) Be interesting 2) Add Value. As they achieve stardom, the momentum of the brand continues it forward, and the traffic they drive to others increases it further.
Are top blogs afflicted with excess advertising?
As blogs reach nuclear status, it’s interesting to see how they start to monetize from ads, focus less on navigating away from the sites, and how much content they continue to share. At what point does the user experience suffer from excess of advertisements?
Methodology:
I took screen captures at 1400 X 1050, a rather large size. I only took the top page view, so it showed what’s above the fold. I then segmented the content types into five major color keys: Identity (as in self-brand), Navigation, Content, Search, and Advertising. This method is modeled after Jakob Nielsen’s homepage usability book.
Findings
Per Surface area on homepage above fold:
Most use of Identity: TMZ Most use of Navigation: Ars Technica Most use of Content: Huffington Post, Ars Technica Most use of Advertisements: Boing Boing, Techcrunch (3 major areas above the fold) Least amountof Advertisements: Post Secret (none), and my blog Most use of Search: TMZ (two for some reason) No use of Search: Techcrunch, Daily Kos (well at least, not above the fold) Most use of White Space: Post Secret
1) Engadget
Engadget
Authority: 30,080
2) Boing Boing
Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things
Authority: 25,587
3) Gizmodo
Gizmodo, the Gadget Guide
Authority: 23,072
4) Techcrunch
Techcrunch
Authority: 21,636
5) Huffington Post
The Huffington Post
Authority: 18,344
6) LifeHacker
Lifehacker, tips and downloads for getting things done
Authority: 17,166
7) Ars Technica
Ars Technica: the Art of Technology. News, analysis, and in depth coverage of technology.
Authority: 16,542
8 ) Daily Kos
Daily Kos: State of the Nation
Authority: 12,583
9) Post Secret
PostSecret: ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.
Authority: 12,294
10) TMZ
TMZ.com
Authority: 11,360
1309) Web Strategy By Jeremiah
Web Strategy by Jeremiah: Jeremiah discusses how companies use the web to connect with customers. While not a top 10 blog, it’s my blog, and therefore I can analyze it. I don’t have ads on for a few reasons: 1) I don’t have significant enough traffic to sustain more than beer money. 2) I’d rather gain trust from my audience bringing good content than worrying that I may reduce credibility by putting ads on the site.
Authority: 1,375
Comments? Questions?
Submit your own homepage analysis, take a screenshot, go into photoshop and do the overlay. Use the colors I set in the color key and set opacity to around 60%. Leave a comment to your screenshot
29 Comments so far
Leave a reply
Just to play a little devil’s advocate Jeremiah, does the fact that the other sites have advertisements make them less credible? Perhaps I am so used to blocking out the advertisements, I am able to more focus on the content. If your point is that they are selling ad space more than the content then I would agree. Content is content in my mind and it has nothing to do with the amount or type of advertising.
Some would argue that advertising is more useful to the user. It can go either way.
If the advertisements add more value to the experience then they improve the site, for example, bringing contextual info right to the folks that need it.
I’m no advertising hater, I know that 85% of Google’s revenue is from ads,
Ads are not going away, in fact, it’s likely to increase on the WWW.
Jeremiah: Thanks for your analysis and for posting up the top blog list per Technorati.
As for blog ads, I have been hearing rumblings that Google smiles upon blog advertising–especially its own adsense.
Thoughts?
There is an interesting articles about how much top bloggers earn from their site, with techcrunch being the most impressive according Business Week Recent Article
It’s interesting how there is little overlap between the top ten bloggers from technorati and top ten bloggers on newsweek.
Interesting analysis. I don’t think advertising hurts if its done tastefully. Still my blog doesn’t have advertising because I’d be lucky to get peanuts at the ballgame with the amount of click-throughs I could generate.
What are the best practices gleaned from the top 10? What would you suggest to top 500 blogs trying to crack this stratosphere?
Jeremiah,
just a quick note about the two search boxes on TMZ…
Because TMZ is part of AOL, the top search box is the AOL websearch while the lower right one is TMZ-specific search. It’s a little confusing to the user certainly, but I can understand the business reason behind it.
Peter, I read that Jeff Jarvis makes 10,000 a month from his ads.
Clint, I saw that too. Good point.
Jeremiah, like Jim, I will play devil’s advocate here too, this site (yours) has loads of advertising.
No, it’s Marketing Allen, but you’re right, I promote those around me quite a bit. (but always transparently)
[…] my previous post this morning, I highlighted the advertising (and other content areas) on the world’s top 10 blogs. […]
Advertising, its not just a revenue stream for the owner of a site but also provides an additional stream of information for the web visitor (which if they find useful/relevant).
Integrating ads into a blog can add value and its something to seriously consider.
Hi Jeremiah
I like the analysis but where is the conclusion?
What is the correlation between these sites and advertising? Are you saying less is more in terms of advertising and/or content is king?
The only conclusion I can make is that if you are less of an authority or have little traffic then you should not try and advertise but the more traffic you have the more adverts you can integrate both to earn revenue and your readers won’t mind.
As someone building an ad network on blognation it is a fine balance between using the space for content value and generating ad revenue. I guess if more people provide you with a usability “heatmap” maybe we can start to draw some inferences?
Sam
Sam
I think your conclusions are what I’m observing, as these blogs build credibilty and authority, they can produce ads, as they’ve already gained enough momentum to sustain.
Heatmap is a great idea, but that requires each of the site owners to let me use it (if we use crazyegg)
who knows, someone may build a browser plugin that will let us observe.
This was cool. I’m usually thinking about how to use the space on my website, but this made me think about space in terms of types of usage: navigation v. content, identity v. navigation, navigation v. search, etc. Here’s my screen shot.
[…] in my previous analysis, I did some homepage breakdowns for the top 10 blogs in Technorati. You must read this first to understand this […]
[…] he leído una entrada muy interesante en el blog de Jeremiah, en la que hacía un profundo análisis de las portadas de los 10 blogs más influyentes según […]
Great breakdown on the layouts of the site. Looks like most have no problem with the big ad on the very top of the page. Good reference.
Glad to see you use the method from my book Homepage Usability. I completely agree that usability applies to blogs just as much as to corporate websites.
It would be great if you would please post the pie chart showing the average distrobution of the screen-space categories. Then we could compare with my pie chart for company homepages, and we could see what type of site focuses the most on user content. (Blogs will probably win that contest, but let’s see the pie chart first, before jumping to conclusions.)
Jakob
Good to see you here, long time reader I am. I don’t have the resources to accuratly create such graphs.
Be sure to see my other part 2 of 2, which has personal blogs.
If you’d like to collaborate on a joint study, send me an email.
I don’t see what the message from this post is either. If the user experience was suffering from the excess of ads, then these blogs wouldn’t be in the top ten! your own methodology ruled out any form of useful conclusion
also, ‘user experience’ is something that can only be determined by asking more than one user..
You won’t learn much from a heatmap either, since CTR is more than just positioning
[…] Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Web Strategy Analysis: Homepage Breakdown of the top 10 Blogs “As blogs reach nuclear status, it’s interesting to see how they start to monetize from ads, focus less on navigating away from the sites, and how much content they continue to share.” (tags: internet blogging webdesign ia usability advertising) […]
[…] Jeremiah Owyang: Web Strategy Analysis (Part 1/2): Homepage Breakdown of the top 10 Blogs […]
Nik, you’re right, I was asking more questions than making conclusions.
I didn’t conclude that ads were a bad thing for top blogs.
See this second analysis, which compares personal blogs and the top blogs.
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/07/22/web-strategy-analysis-part-2-homepage-breakdown-of-tech-related-personal-blogs-in-technorati-100/#comment-65443
[…] Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Web Strategy Analysis (Part 1/2): Homepage Breakdown of the top 10 Blogs To analyze the homepage web strategies of the top blogs in the world (tags: ads advertising blog blogging design internet usability webdesign marketing strategy) […]
[…] Web Strategy Analysis : Homepage Breakdown of the top 10 Blogs - An extremely detailed and interesting look at the home page designs of the Top 10 blogs. See how the right balance of content and advertising may appeal to your users. […]
[…] compare using the same techniques I did for the top ten blogs(well they are more like magazines and top personal tech […]
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Nice review!
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Ads are essential to the growth and sustainment of a site. The key is to keep your audience in mind. Types of ads are as important as the number of them.
Jeremiah is right, ads aren’t going away and they play an important role in the quality of content the reader receives. The less time a site needs to concentrate on making money, the more time they can spend on content quality.
In fact, loyal readers should make it a habit of clicking on the ads of sites they like as a way of supporting that site. It’s free to do it, and it benefits all parties.
Interesting article!