Bloggers are not household names – still
I get these minor attacks of stats and celebrity watching. I thought I’d try to do something interesting with it by comparing blog search results for a combination of mass media or household names with a collection of bloggers or social media folks to see how things compare.
The following is an unscientific sampling of Google Blog Search results, tracking the results of searches on people’s names. I searched for the number of occurances of each name during the past 30 days, as taken today around 11 AM EST. The list is sorted in descending order based on number of hits (or results) during the past month.
What exactly will we find in this? Have a look first, my thoughts are below:
| Subject
|
Description
|
Results (mnth) |
| (President) Barack Obama | “Leader of the free world” |
5972179 |
| Sarah Palin | Ex-politician |
476077 |
| Miley Cyrus | Actress/singer |
327621 |
| Paris Hilton | Heiress/actress/media object |
161083 |
| Angelina Jolie | Actress/activist |
130720 |
| Brad Pitt | Actor/activist |
130595 |
| Oprah (Winfrey) | Media mogul |
85413 |
| Jennifer Aniston | Actress |
78107 |
| Stephenie Meyer | Author of the “Twilight” novels |
59467 |
| Bill Gates | Tech mogul turned philanthropist |
54171 |
| Steve Jobs | Apple co-founder and demi-god |
53893 |
| Gordon Brown | Current UK Prime Minister |
38859 |
| J.K. Rowling | Author, Harry Potter series |
33516 |
| Stephen King | Author, too many books to count |
31922 |
| Meryl Streep | Actress (currently playing Julia Child) |
24842 |
| Emily Osment | Myley Cyrus’s co-star on Hannah Montana |
23924 |
| Seth Godin | Business/marketing blogger/author/guru |
20973 |
| Julia Child | Deceased chef, author, and very tall person |
20052 |
| Billy Ray Cyrus | Myley Cyrus’s co-star on Hannah Montana/musician |
18675 |
| Tony Blair | Former British Prime Minister |
18227 |
| William Shatner | Media icon |
13414 |
| Chris Anderson | Author/editor/Wired/Free/The Long Tail |
12339 |
| Eric Bana | Actor |
12162 |
| Stephen Harper | Canada’s Prime Minister |
11135 |
| Bill Clinton | Former… you know |
10953 |
| Malcolm Gladwell | Author/journalist |
10477 |
| Mark Cuban | Mogul |
8408 |
| Arianna Huffington | Blogger/heiress |
7209 |
| Mark Zuckerberg | Facebook founder |
6299 |
| Curt Schilling | Baseball player, blogger |
5334 |
| Chris Brogan | New marketing guy/author/blogger |
4975 |
| Cory Doctorow | SF author/blogger |
4730 |
| Wil Wheaton | Writer/blogger/actor/cool guy |
4268 |
| Robert Scoble | Tech enthusiast/blogger/broadcaster |
4175 |
| Tom Peters | Business guru |
3431 |
| Michael Arrington | Blogger |
3329 |
| Dave Winer | Tech guru, invented RSS standard |
2858 |
| Michael Ignatieff | Canada – Leader of the Official Opposition |
2534 |
| Larry Page | Google co-founder |
2447 |
| Leo Laporte | Tech enthusiast/blogger/broadcaster |
2186 |
| Fred Wilson | Venture Capital guy/blogger |
2087 |
| Sergey Brin | Google co-founder |
1901 |
| Darren Rowse | Blogger/internet marketer/author |
1624 |
| Steve Pavlina | Blogger/author – personal development entrepreneur |
1373 |
| Brian Solis | Blogger, author, photographer, PR guy |
1372 |
| Julia Allison | Known for being Internet famous |
1238 |
| Andrew Keen | Journalist/blogger/author |
1116 |
| Brian Clark | Blogger/internet marketer/author |
253 |
| Pierre Trudeau | Former Canadian Prime Minister |
235 |
| Brian Mulroney | Former Canadian Prime Minister |
204 |
| Jean Chretien | Former Canadian Prime Minister |
183 |
| Hugh MacLeod | Cartoonist/blogger/author |
127 |
| Louis Gray | Technology marketer/blogger |
95 |
| Tamar Weinberg | Interwriter marketablogger media dervish |
78 |
| Sarah Lacy | Tech journalist/blogger/author |
76 |
| Jennifer Van Grove | Social media consultant/blogger |
68 |
| Steve Gillmor | Tech journalist/writer/host |
54 |
| Liz Strauss | Blogger/consultant |
43 |
| Lisa Barone | Interwriter marketablogger media dervish |
43 |
| Muhammad Saleem | Social media consultant/blogger |
29 |
| Loren Feldman | Media maker/blogger |
24 |
| Mathew Ingram | Tech journalist/community manager |
23 |
| Corvida (Raven) | Blogger/community manager |
23 |
| Naomi Dunford | Internet marketer/small business consultant |
21 |
| Mark Dykeman | Blogger/experiment control |
8 |
My thoughts:
- Of course all of these numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt. These results come from blog entries, but they also come from comments made to blog entries. Is that a big difference? Probably not, but it’s worth considering.
- SPAM: some of these names are probably being used to sell stuff, either for the person being mentioned or for someone else who’s capitalizing on their good fortune. Heck, some of these people have likely generated some of these results by their own activity. My hypothesis is that the more famous you are, the higher the percentage of blog posts that reference you are really SPAM.
- It sure looks like the folks with more mass media exposure get relatively more mentions in the blogosphere, regardless of whether or not they are active participants.
- This study ignores Twitter/microblogging activity, message boards, and theoretically anything not considered a blog.
- This is more of a curiosity than something useful, but it might provide more interesting information over time.
- There are probably lots of other interesting people that we could survey.
I’m sort of interested in doing this type of survey periodically, but I think I could use more. I have 65 names here so far, it would be a little more interesting to have 100.
Can you think of other interesting names, maybe 35 more in total, that we could use to expand this up to 100 names?
Who do you think would make interesting people (mass-media or digital media) to track?
Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins:
Blogging for over a decade has it's benefits – I'm referenced above William Shatner, with 12.8k mentions!
18 August 2009, 2:35 pmMark Dykeman:
In one month? Well, regardless, congrats, you're on the list!
18 August 2009, 2:40 pmMark 'Rizzn' Hopkins:
Ah, one month long sampling – lemme go re-search. I don't know that I've been mentioned that many times in a month. :-p
…
That drops it down to 23. Much more realistic.
18 August 2009, 4:35 pmtim:
(celeb) Britney
and
(blogger) Michael Hyatt
18 August 2009, 6:23 pmMark Dykeman:
Sorry, man.
19 August 2009, 6:35 amMark Dykeman:
Sure.
19 August 2009, 6:35 amIan Rountree:
What about the Chewbacca of the internet, Chris Brogan? Google search brings up 352k entries, and I'm willing to bet most of them are him. A blog search brings up just under a hundred thousand.
Professional bloggers don't get much mention. But blogging professionals benefit much more.
19 August 2009, 10:51 amMark Dykeman:
Hi Ian. Chris is already on the list, you can check it out.
19 August 2009, 11:48 amMichael Kozakewich:
You NEED to have Jeffrey Zeldman! He's the foremost figure in what I call the 'metaweb' (like, the internet the internet, such as web design/development or the W3C).
On that note, you should also include Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the internet.
19 August 2009, 4:03 pmMark Dykeman:
Yes, good additions!
20 August 2009, 6:47 amThe Vortex: The Nice Version « The Guidewire:
[...] the discovery that “well-known” bloggers aren’t much known outside of Palo Alto. Mark Dykeman did some number crunching based on Google Blog Search results and found that household names in the [...]
21 August 2009, 1:14 pm