Ever since MyDD briefly appeared in the Technorati top 100 list for most linked blogs in November of 2006, I have followed the rankings much more closely than I did in the past. Recently, I noticed something interesting about the difference in incoming links between the highly ranked progressive blogs and highly ranked conservative blogs. Specifically, progressive blogs have a much, much higher number of total incoming links, while conservative blogs have a high number of blogs sending them incoming links. Check this out:

Ranking by number of different blogs sending incoming links:

• 11. Huffington Post: 14,067
• 16. Dailykos: 10,999 and 57. Dailykos Story Only: 5,068, and 86. Dailykos Story: 4,030. I don't know why there are three entries for Dailykos.
• 19. Michelle Malkin: 9,682
• 21. Think Progress: 9,051
• 25. Crooks and Liars: 8,689
• 30. Raw Story: 6,963
• 33. Instapundit: 6,593
• 43. Hot Air: 5,942
• 50. Powerline: 5,575
• 56. Little Green Footballs: 5,071
• 77. Hugh Hewitt: 4,262
• 82. Talking Points Memo: 4,183
• 84. Captain's Quarters: 4,047
• 103. New Busters: 3,544
• 105. The Corner: 3,504
• 116. Andrew Sullivan: 3,340
• 124. Washington Monthly: 3,205
• 134. Truthdig: 3,119
• 155. Glenn Greenwald: 2,866
• 162. MyDD: 2,810

Going total blogs sending incoming links, the conservative blogosphere looks competitive with the progressive blogosphere. However, now check out the political blog rankings by total incoming links:

1. Dailykos: 82,393. Also: 26,153 and 16,539.
2. Huffington Post: 73,181
3. Think Progress: 49,994
4. Crooks and Liars: 42,890
5. Michelle Malkin: 41,709
6. Little Green Footballs: 39,832
7. Hot Air: 37,236
8. Raw Story: 37,189
9. Instapundit: 22,643
10. Captain's Quarters: 20,502
11. MyDD: 20,100
12. Powerline: 19,975
13. Talking Points Memo: 19,495
14. The Corner: 17,609
15. Newsbusters: 15,701
16. Glenn Greenwald: 14,616
17. TPM Café: 14,299
18. Washington Monthly: 14,200
19. Fiedoglake: 14,195
20. Eschaton: 14,172

These two lists suggest a very different balance between the two blogospheres. While the first one suggests only a small progressive edge, the second list shows virtually unchallenged progressive dominance. Andrew Sullivan and Hugh Hewitt, despite their lofty rankings in the first list, don't even make the top twenty in the second list. Conservative standard bearers such as Instapundit, powerline, and Captain's Quarters have no more incoming links than MyDD, even though we barely make the first list. In fact, in the second list, progressive blogs have more than double the total incoming links of conservative blogs.

Showing the ratio between total number of linking blogs and total number of incoming links for each of these twenty-three blogs is interesting (extra decimal places included for some blogs in order to demonstrate tie-breaker method):

1. Little Green Footballs: 7.9 incoming links per blog sending incoming links
2. MyDD: 7.2
3. TPM Café: 6.7
4. Hot Air: 6.3
5. Firedoglake: 6.00
6. Dailykos: 5.98
7. Think Progress: 5.5
8. Atrios: 5.4
9. Raw Story: 5.3
10. Huffington Post: 5.2
11. Glenn Greenwald: 5.10
12. Captain's Quarters: 5.07
13. The Corner: 5.0
14. Crooks and Liars: 4.9
15. Talking Points Memo: 4.7
16. Washington Monthy: 4.431
17. News Busters: 4.430
18. Michelle Malkin: 4.3
19. Truthdig: 4.1
20. Andrew Sullivan: 3.7
21. Powerline: 3.6
22. Instapundit: 3.4
23. Hugh Hewitt: 2.7

Despite the rather surprising ratio sported by Little Green Footballs, conservative blogs are clearly grouped near the bottom of this list. The bottom four, and six of the bottom seven, are conservative. Only two conservative blogs, lgf and Hot Air, are in the top ten. Overall, the thirteen progressive websites listed here have a mean blog-to-link ratio of 5.45, and a median of 5.3, while the ten conservative blogs have a mean blog-to-link ratio of 4.90, and a median of 4.3 / 4.43. While this study has a limited number of data points, the evidence here suggests a statistically significant difference in the blog-to-link ration between progressive and conservative blogs.

What causes this difference? Why do top progressive blogs receive a higher average number of incoming links from the blogs that link them than do top conservative blogs? I can speculate:

1. The conservative blogosphere is older. Given the greater age of many of the conservative blogs towards to bottom of the list, it is possible that a greater number of the blogs that onced link to them are no longer active. Then again, Little Green Footballs is just about the oldest conservative blog of all, and it is near the top of the list.
2. A greater amount of total content posted on progressive blogs. Many of these incoming links are from blogrolls that are coded into the template of a blog. This means that for many websites, whenever new content is posted, it creates a new outgoing link to every blog on the blogroll. Thus, if liberal blogs were to make a higher number of new posts, it would result in a higher number of outgoing links.
3. Progressive blogosphere consolidation. Top progressive blogs have a higher share of progressive blogosphere traffic than do top conservative blogs have within the conservative blogosphere. Perhaps buzz within the progressive blogosphere is similarly concentrated in a smaller number of mega-blogs.

Anyway, while I do not have definitive answers for this difference in linking patterns, I think it is interesting stuff. Hopefully, conducting this study will provide some context to current discussions on blogrolls. From my perspective, it is certainly informative to note that whatever blogs do link to MyDD, link to us quite a lot.