As of May 13, 2009: Just a few years ago, companies had hardly considered blogs as a viable option for corporate communication. Today, they are getting ever more attention. Some of it has been applied in the last six months.
This is the main message for the first FT ComMetrics Blog Index of Corporate Blogging Effectiveness. Fully half of the blogs we have examined in the last few months have experienced substantial developments and changes.
These data were taken May 13, 2009. You can find an updated list here:
Latest FT ComMetrics Blog Index - FTCBI
© ComMetrics - CyTRAP Labs GmbH 2009-05-13.
Note. Some of the calculations used in this table draw upon publicly available information that has not been independently investigated by ComMetrics - a division of CyTRAP Labs GmbH. Other data were independently investigated and collected by ComMetrics. Rankings do not represent a guarantee of future performance for blogs.
In the case of several blogs from one company (e.g., Daimler, Dell, Google, Oracle and Wal-Mart), the highest ranking one is included in this list.Check out more about the methodology used and composite indices applied.
Blogs that require registration to gain access are NOT included in this list because gated communities do not follow the Internet's philosophy of making information freely and easily available to the public.
Methododology.
The FT ComMetrics Blog Index ranks the effectiveness of the corporate blogs of the top 75 companies from the US, Europe and the rest of the world listed on the FT Global 500 2008.
To create the table, the highest-scoring corporate blog is given a ComMetrics Footprint score of 100, and other scores are recalculated as a percentage in relation to that top score. The corporation with an overall score of 100 is therefore not necessarily top in every category; rather, it has accumulated the highest composite score.
To arrive at a corporation’s rank, we examine the data for each indicator and standardize the value for each about its mean using z-scores. All criteria are then aggregated and re-standardized. The following categories are used in the table of raw data.
● Google PageRank interprets web links and assigns a numerical weighting to each site.
● Technorati Authority analyses the number of links to a blog from other sites.
● Technorati Ranking rates blogs according to authority and popularity.
● Yahoo! InLinks monitors links to a blog.
● Google Blog Search is a search engine for blogs that produces lists of results, the
●ComMetrics Footprint is the rankings we calculate using the above indicators.
What will happen during the current economic downturn? Tough recessionary times would suggest that more emphasis should be placed on this effective communications medium. We'll keep you posted.
P.S. - Some would say that there are no good indicators other than a site's own unique visitor numbers and bounce rate. However, these measures are increasingly inaccurate when attempting to determine the value derived from non revenue-generating activities like blogging. Of course, the indicators and composite indices we provide above may not give you the whole truth and nothing but the truth either.
Thus, data do help demonstrate a trend and while the difference between 90 versus 120 backlinks may be real, it is not necessarily something to worry about. Still, if your backlinks dropped or your competitors' backlinks improved significantly within the last six months, then getting your social media budget approved probably just got more difficult. Unless you can show how this will help to move your blog up in the rankings.
