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Bloggers beat news sites for online authority

Posted: 22/12/05 By: Jemima Kiss
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Bloggers can have more influence online than leading news organisations, according to research by web monitoring firm Market Sentinel.

The report uses a case study of journalist and blogger Jeff Jarvis and his long-running problems with Dell Computer's customer service to examine the influence of his blog on Dell's corporate reputation.

Sentinel used a method called 'citation indexing' to measure the influence of Jarvis' blog, which calculates a writer's authority in a particular context and produces an index of dominant authorities.

Conventional ways of measuring influence have monitored the number of links on a site, the number of sites that link to a site and the volume of traffic but these methods are less effective at tracking the status of blogs in relation to others.

"We wanted to take a scientific approach, objectively demonstrating which bloggers have authority and an ability to affect corporate reputation," said Mark Rogers, CEO of Market Sentinel.

"We are able to quantify and analysis the impact each blogger has on a company's brand image and analyse the indirect influence as well as direct impact: proving that blogging has a significant affect on reputation."

An 'issue influence index' measured the number of times a blogger is linked to or cited as a source. By this measure, Jeff Jarvis is more than twice as authoritative as Dell online when ranked on the issue of Dell customer service.

It also found that for the same 'Dell Hell' subject, Bloglines writers are more authoritative than Business Week, Ed Bott more than the BBC and snopes, ps260.com and Tom's Hardware more than the Washington Post.

Blog content is permanent, search-engine friendly and can be published to multiple sites simultaneously, but differs from traditional journalism because bloggers often report just one side of an issue and add their own spin. They also often rely on single sources and other bloggers for their information.

But the personal style of blogging adds to their authority; what the report calls the 'my story' phenomenon. When reporting directly on a personal experience, that person becomes the most authoritative source.

This was the basis for Jeff Jarvis' credibility in the 'Dell Hell' episode, but Dell's failure to engage with the blogging community damaged its own status further.

Blog readers had only Jarvis' account of his dealings with Dell: "Dell's 'defence' was mediated by a highly sceptical group of writers," said the report.

"The limitation of bloggers - their lack of journalistic 'balance' - is the key to the way corporations should respond to blogging attacks."

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