Top 10 Blogosphere Trends A data-driven study of blogger and blogger audience trends

Hi, I’m Greg and I’m a blogger.

• I’m Lijit’s product weenie• I’m a blogger• I’m a periodic author• I’m a daddy• I’m a husband• I’m a bike racer• @mudandcowbells• Tell me about you!

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Data: The Lijit Secret Sauce

• 11,000 installed publishers (100+ per day)

• 2,700,000 blog-rolled publishers crawled

• 30,000,000 uniques (monthly)• 350,000,000 page views (monthly)• ~6 on-line content sources per

publisher• 20082009 y/y analysis• What did we find out?• How can it help you be a better

blogger?

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Let’s talk data and how it attributed to our report….

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1

• Bloggers are getting wise & the long tail is speaking loudly.

• Brands are seeking community voice. • What is your ad (and ad tag) strategy?• Is contextually relevant creative displayed?

68%Percent INCREASE of blogs that have installed ad tags between y.t.d.2008-2009.

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2

• Increase in ad network options for bloggers is evident.

• Bloggers are experimenting beyond Google Ads.

• Ad networks aggregating readers to entice large brands and agencies.

• Display more attractive than text to bloggers.

47%DECREASE from 68% in 2008 of publishers using Google Ad Sense to monetize their sites.

Lijit Networks, Inc.

3

• What social media tools are you using? Why?• Are external tools used for driving blog traffic?• Is visual media a priority? • ‘Visual Parsing’ easier for searchers to impulse

and click on your link.

6The number of social media tools used by bloggers in addition to their blog.

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4

• How are you leveraging the tool? (and it is a tool IMHO)

• How are you building followers?• Are micro-blogs favorable? Trend is to move

away from what’s ‘hard’ to micro-blogs (Posterous, FaceBook).

3.14%Percentage of page views referred to by Twitter for blogs with >100 page views a

day.

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5

• This is about INFLUENCE. Blogroll adoption is a measure of this.

• Exposure is key to driving traffic (no duh).• What are you doing to reach out to other

bloggers? • Their SEO is your SEO and vice versa.

47Average number of members within a blog roll.

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6

• How are you measuring time on site?• How are you measuring its importance?• What are you doing to ‘cause pause’?• Search, stay-on-site tools increasing in popularity.• Apture, Wibiya to be looked at.

72%Percent INCREASE in blogs installing tools designed to reduce bounce rate.

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7

27%Percentage of page views attributed to global search engine referrals (Google,

Yahoo, Bing/MSN and Ask)

•The major % are ‘direct’ hits indicating people in your sphere of influence having you

bookmarked.

•How are you getting beyond that network?

•Influence, blogroll inclusion and social networking (e.g. commenting) are key.

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8

• As query strings get longer, more referrals pass to smaller publications.

• Why is this relevant? Specificity! • Super positive trend for mid/long tail blogger

exposure. • Be an expert!

50%The percentage of Google, Yahoo and Bing/MSN search queries which contain 3 or more

terms..

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9

• #FAIL (we can use this as Lijit powers www.failblog.org )

• Readers are at a disservice if they can’t get to your old content (old to you/new to them!).

• Search result ad shots on goal are non-existent!

• Content mining allows increased page views!

25%Total percentage of blogs WITHOUT search functionality!!

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10

• Increased page views means increased shots on goal for advertisers.

• How are you categorizing/tagging your posts?• How are you exposing (meta) key words so

advertisers can take advantage?

3-5%The average increase in page views due to searches performed on a site.