With Google’s PageRank not a hugely touted way of valuing blogs, and now Technorati killing off its ranking system, how are we going to compare and contrast two blogs in an easy to understand way? Are twitter and Facebook followers and fans the new metric by which we evaluate popularity? Do you have to be an SEO guru with access to applications that can dig around and compare keyword rankings for terms? Does anyone publicly show their traffic stats anymore?

I really used to enjoy looking at the rankings of different sites. I remember at one point, when I was building Extra for Every Publisher, I was on a top list for “Make Money Online” blogs and worked really hard to climb that list. The competition factor was a super useful motivator.

There was also bragging rights in being highly ranked on Technorati. I remember a few years back, all kinds of sites were showing off how they ranked in the various blog index sections that Technorati had.

It just seems very strange to me that we don’t have more ways to easily monitor and track the growth or decline of a blogs popularity. But that’s probably just me.