Trying to Figure Out N.Z. Bear’s Eco System

 
Is anyone else having the same problems we are with TTLB?

The graph of visitor numbers is always accurate, but of late, the listing of posts is usually a week out of date, and the posts listed have long since gone off our front page, thus the links are way out of whack.

I wouldn’t mind if they were way off in our favor, but that’s not the way it seems to go.

Here’s TTLB’s current record as of this post, with mine in parentheses underneath:

I’m a Terrorist Groupie, Hear Me Roar April 7 - 10 links
(I’m a Terrorist Groupie, Hear Me Roar — 21 links)

Can Religions Build Their Own Enclaves? April 6 - 1 link
(Can Religions Build Their Own Enclaves April 6 - 2 links)

The Reavers and Jihad April 2 - 0 links
(The Reavers and Jihad April 2nd -9 links)

The Ordinary Muslim April 4 - 0 links
(The Ordinary Muslim April 4 - 4 links)


Never listed, as far as I can tell:
A Year in the Ummah April 1st 4 links

This list was taken from the TTLB posting on April 12th, but it’s the latest ranking for us…which means it’s almost a week off, since there is nothing on the list past April 7th. When I looked last week, there was nothing past March 31st, which was about five or six days previous to my check. There’s a gap of several days, which is why I put up an April 1st post that had four links.

As I understand it, from reading the FAQs, when the tracking is noted, it only covers the front page. So if you post a lot, which we sometimes do, any information picked up by N.Z. Bear completely misses posts with trackbacks that fall off the front page -- thus they don’t get counted into the rating.

Which ultimately means our ranking at TTLB isn’t very accurate, and the lack of accuracy puts us further down the ecosystem than we actually might be.

Do other people have this problem?

It’s gotten now so that I just briefly check Technorati to see if we’re up or down, and look at the stats chart at TTLB just to see how wildly the graph varies (which is accurate, as any blogger knows. Sitemeter numbers are a roller coaster ride for smallish blogs like ours).

I’m disappointed at losing something that was fun to watch. If any of our technically savvy readers can explain to me why this has changed, I’d be interested to hear.

Meanwhile, I’ll remember the reason we started this blog: to have a conversation with others we knew were out there. And we ended up with more readers than I thought we’d ever have. The lurkers who send us emails and tips, the readers who show up every day, the commenters — it’s all fun. Time-consuming, yeah…but Wretchard warned us about that.

I mean, what should I do, ask for my money back?