As I see it the same problem exists with blog ‘alliances’. Just take a look at the difference in the Truth Laid Bear’s ecosystem rankings based on links vs. their ranking by traffic.

And speaking of traffic, I’d love to see a blog’s traffic taken into account. Some of us, ahem, may not get many links from other bloggers but have a pretty good level of traffic. Of course the problem here is deciding on how to measure the traffic…

I therefore think it’s important to not engage in the activity at all. Focus on your content make friends where you can and know you are alright with the world no matter what some list may say.

I think having an “indie” index would be a great idea… basically take out all the Gawker, WeblogsInc, etc. blogs…. I’m all for it because the list of indie blogs is where we find new bloggers to work with!

Thank you for making the issue this clear. We’d heard similiar items from other sources but had not yet had time to sit down and detail it out for ourselves. Now we don’t have to.

I’m re-posting part of this on the public algorithm wiki at:
http://www.socialtext.net/topicindex/index.cgi?feedster_top_500

If you want to drive us more on the detail, please add to the wiki. Thank you.