31 Dec, 2007 in Taiwan by Fili An Tags:

English language Taiwan blogs : The top bloggers 2007

There are some really good English language Taiwan blogs out there, and almost every week I discover another one that’s worth keeping track of. With 2008 just around the corner, I thought I’ll do a special tribute to the top English language Taiwan bloggers, but soon faced the question of who are Taiwan’s English language top blogs. So, I thought I’ll do it systematically, using some tools and rankings that I have.

DISCLAIMER : this is only for my fun and play, nothing else. This could be completely wrong and messed up, and it means nothing. It’s just my way of using what’s available to try and understand something more about our little Taiwan blogosphere, but it might be completely flawed.

To do this, I used some software to rip down all “Bloggers in Taiwan” sidebar Taiwan blog listings (Xenu software) and then applied some SEO software to validate that they still exist since many are no longer there and then then check their rank according to different methodologies common used for comparing websites.

Taiwan blogs ranked by Alltheweb incoming links

There are many services that check how many incoming links there are to a blog, but Alltheweb performs the best with blogs, since the others mess up with blogging services that are hosted on subdomains (like : ABCDEF.BLOGSPOT.COM hosted on Blogger’s BLOGSPOT domain). When I looked at the Alltheweb rankings, they did made sense to me (done with Link Popularity Check software).

What incoming links are about is the number of external sites mentioning or pointing to that domain, giving it higher authority. If it says 2000, it means there are ~2000 websites that are pointing to that address with a link :

  1. http://michaelturton.blogspot.com 67200
  2. http://battlepanda.blogspot.com 54800
  3. http://onlyredheadintaiwan.blogspot.com 44500
  4. http://www.princeroy.org 29300
  5. http://keywords.oxus.net 27900
  6. http://blog.taiwan-guide.org 26500
  7. http://www.filination.com/blog 17600
  8. http://toshuo.com 16800
  9. http://teamasters.blogspot.com 16200
  10. http://globetrotteri.wordpress.com 15500
  11. http://www.therealtaiwan.com 10300
  12. http://dailybubbletea.wordpress.com 10100
  13. http://whatsupintaiwan.blogspot.com 9450
  14. http://en.wildatheart.org.tw 9180
  15. http://jorees.wordpress.com 8180
  16. http://scottsommers.blogs.com/taiwanweblog 8110
  17. http://www.blog.craigfergusonimages.com 7450
  18. http://hungryintaipei.blogspot.com 7420
  19. http://taiwanbaseball.blogspot.com 7340
  20. http://www.thememoirs.org 7190
  21. http://formosaneijia.com 7160
  22. http://robotactionboy.wordpress.com/ 7040
  23. http://indiac.blogspot.com 6690
  24. http://www.thenhbushman.com/ 6460
  25. http://www.taoyuan-nights.com 6410

Taiwan blogs ranked by Altavista incoming links

Since Alltheweb isn’t perfect, I’ll be fair and include another incoming links rankings – Altavista (done with Link Popularity Check software) :

  1. http://michaelturton.blogspot.com 74800
  2. http://onlyredheadintaiwan.blogspot.com 48000
  3. http://battlepanda.blogspot.com 37200
  4. http://blog.taiwan-guide.org 33200
  5. http://keywords.oxus.net 32000
  6. http://www.therealtaiwan.com 20100
  7. http://teamasters.blogspot.com 18700
  8. http://www.princeroy.org 18500
  9. http://globetrotteri.wordpress.com 18500
  10. http://dailybubbletea.wordpress.com 14600
  11. http://toshuo.com 14000
  12. http://www.wannabemyfriend.com 13000
  13. http://robotactionboy.wordpress.com/ 11200
  14. http://jorees.wordpress.com 11100
  15. http://formosaneijia.com 10400
  16. http://www.thenhbushman.com/ 10300
  17. http://indiac.blogspot.com 10200
  18. http://hungryintaipei.blogspot.com 9850
  19. http://www.taoyuan-nights.com 9060
  20. http://foreignerinformosa.typepad.com 8750
  21. http://thothharris.blogspot.com 8330
  22. http://orxilinasia.blogspot.com 8320

Taiwan blogs ranked by Google Pagerank

Incoming links are an important factor but they have a problem since they don’t contain “authority” relevance. Getting 2 links from high-quality high-authority sites might be worth more than getting 10 links from low-quality low-authority sites. The (somewhat controversial) rank for that kind of authority is Google’s Pagerank that gives a number between 0 and 10 ranking a site’s authority based on the authority of the incoming links. The more quality incoming links you have, the higher the authority. So, it’s another way of looking at what kind of attention Taiwan blogs get (done with Nesox Link Checker Pro)

Pagerank 6

  1. http://keywords.oxus.net
  2. http://www.filination.com/blog

Pagerank 5

  1. http://battlepanda.blogspot.com
  2. http://globetrotteri.wordpress.com
  3. http://jorees.wordpress.com
  4. http://josambro.blogspot.com
  5. http://meiguotaiwanren.wordpress.com
  6. http://michaelturton.blogspot.com
  7. http://onlyredheadintaiwan.blogspot.com
  8. http://orxilinasia.blogspot.com
  9. http://pinyin.info/news
  10. http://wheninroam.wordpress.com
  11. http://www.thememoirs.org

Pagerank 4

  1. http://a-gu.blogspot.com
  2. http://blog.taiwan-guide.org
  3. http://dailybubbletea.wordpress.com
  4. http://drepix.blogspot.com
  5. http://en.wildatheart.org.tw
  6. http://formosaneijia.com
  7. http://hungryintaipei.blogspot.com
  8. http://jonintaiwan.blogspot.com
  9. http://lovelesscynic.blogspot.com
  10. http://robotactionboy.blogspot.com
  11. http://scottsommers.blogs.com/taiwanweblog
  12. http://taidaexchange.wordpress.com
  13. http://taiwanphotographers.blogspot.com
  14. http://talovich.blogspot.com
  15. http://teamasters.blogspot.com
  16. http://thegentlerant.blogspot.com
  17. http://thenebulonfry.com
  18. http://thirstyghosts.blogspot.com
  19. http://thothharris.blogspot.com
  20. http://toshuo.com
  21. http://unwho.blogspot.com
  22. http://whatsupintaiwan.blogspot.com
  23. http://www.blog.craigfergusonimages.com
  24. http://www.evilasad.com
  25. http://www.frostfox.com/blog
  26. http://www.princeroy.org
  27. http://www.taoyuan-nights.com

-

For me – these are interesting lists. Many quality blogs out there that I found through this exercise that I wasn’t tracking before and I think it does give somesort of virtual map of the blogging leaders of the Taiwanese English language blogosphere.

-

Interesting? boring? meaningful? meaningless? stupid? makes sense? helpful? waste of time? let me know… I’m interested.

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  • waltz
    its basically, they themselves got problem....at least we are english educated since young, unlike them...onli know "mia niah yu" and chinese.......even our aunties and uncle also know english....

    if they happened to meet some of our professional......dun think they can communicate with them with english....cos they simple dun understand......


    As a matter of fact, the general taiwanese public reference their entertainment variety shows as nothing but fulla crap and junks, nothing worthy of paying attention to, uneducational. They ran out topics coz their producer cannot produce anything else and use our native culture here as a joke.

    The TV station deserves our sympathy, likewise their celebs for their narrow mindedness and being so shortsighted.

    We on the other hand stands proud and souverign in UN flying our multi-racial flag.

    WE ARE SINGAPOREANS!
  • I see.

    Yeah, and blogspot is easier for me because it's the first platform I used.

    Robert's last blog post..Independence? Not if my Chinese-made globe has anything to say about it...
  • Robert - great, glad to hear that.
    "boosting" only has to do with simple Search Engine Optimization that can only be done on your own platform, so that search engines will be able to understand your site better and rank it higher on keyword results. It's usually a 1 hour tweak that makes a huge difference... and trust me I had a hard time believing how big a difference this would make but my blog is living proof for this "boost" actually happening.
    It's not only Wordpress, though it's also having your own domain and not being on a subdomain, and other things like that ...

    Blogspot easier to use than Wordpress, BTW, kind'o surprises me... but I guess habit does that.
  • Why exactly would the Taiwan blogosphere be boosted by everyone moving to Wordpress.

    I'd certainly be willing to do it if it would help. I've got another Wordpress site, so I'm somewhat familiar with it, but I find blogspot much easier to use.

    Enlighten me, please.

    By the Fili. Thanks for the post. It was quite interesting, and I found several new Taiwan sites as a result. Including yours!

    Robert's last blog post..Independence? Not if my Chinese-made globe has anything to say about it...
  • This list isn't right! My blog should be at the top of all the lists! I mean.....look at my banner, it's so pretty! Come on people start linking to it! http://www.frostfox.com/blog

    Frostfox's last blog post..The Return of Taipei Days
  • Michael - I do hope you mean a self hosted Wordpress and not Wordpress.com . Either way - congratulations. Looking forward to seeing that in action.
  • fili, i have a wordpress site set up, and I'll be moving over there in a month or so. Some great comments on this thread.

    Michael
  • Bushman, John - this is how to move from blogger to wordpress without losing authority and incoming links. Redirect this way :
    http://www.techcounter.com/wordpress/301-perman...
    http://www.techcounter.com/wordpress/migrate-fr...

    If anybody needs help with that, let me know. Good luck.
  • There are ways to transfer your PR ranking to the new site. It isn't that hard, but it isn't so easy either... Fili has some documentation out there for transferring from Blogspot to WordPress and maintaining Google PR.

    John's last blog post..Ma Ying Jiu
  • Fili, thanks for the stats listing. to anyone considering a move to a hosted domain, i suggest the sooner, the better. i lost technorati and google ranks when i moved. sure it's going up and it'll get there eventually. but the big sites will become very small as soon as they move to a hosted domain, so you'll just have to live with the pain. but the good news is, the site visits and page views will increase as you develop your own brand.

    MJ Klein's last blog post..419 Scammers Get Smart With New Domains - Assistance From US Co-conspirators
  • Joshua - :D

    I'm afraid I've only recently discovered your blog, and was happy to find out that you co-author Lonely Planet Taiwan and other important guide book about our region. You're doing what I consider as holy work - I'd give you a 10... ;)
  • Todd - aside from people recognizing you in the MRT, I've talked to a lot of my international student friends about their blogging habits. Most of those who do read blogs usually mention that they follow at least the following two blogs - Michael's and yours. You (and your girlfriend) are a blogging celebrity in Taiwan... ;)
  • Range - true. I know your old blog and it is one of high authority - very similar to the one you've transferred to. I think it just wasn't in the site where I ripped the links from.
  • Carrie - thanks. I strongly recommend that you do the switch to a new domain and your own self hosted platform. I was once, not too long ago, like you. This blog was actually running in blogspot for over a year and I had no idea how to set up a Wordpress, but - part of the whole fun is that you learn a lot while you do it and I learned things as I needed them. If you wish, I'm sure many - like myself - would be happy to help you do the switch.
  • Wordpress MU is just like Wordpress.com, but I'd like to see the bloggers running their own domain with their own platform and plugins.

    If you can offer them Wordpress MU where they host their own domains, and offer them a wide enough array of plugins - that could be a cool project.
  • Hooray! I'm page-rank FIVE!!!!

    FIVE! FIVE! FIVE! FIVE!
    Let's sing a song about five!
    How many is five?

    One!
    Two!
    Three!
    Four!
    FIIIIIIIIVVVVE!!!!!

    FIIIIIVE Snarky Tofu!!!!!

    Joshua Samuel Brown's last blog post..Current Events Suck
  • Cool list Fili! I don't know much about these numbers but it's reassuring to see that I'm not last in any of the categories.

    Todd's last blog post..Happy New Year!
  • I just checked quickly and your site is a PR 4.

    John's last blog post..Taipei 101 New Years Eve Fireworks Display
  • If there is interest in something like that I could make some time for it. I have been enjoying Wordpress for a long time now.

    Some things are very easy to do, but if you don't know that they even exist, then why would you do it. Wordpress, conveniently, is working these "fixes" into their newer versions.

    Maybe a Wordpress MU for Taiwan bloggers could come out of it...

    John's last blog post..Taipei 101 New Years Eve Fireworks Display
  • Interesting list. To be fair, you'd have to include my mirror blog on Worpdress.com, range.wordpress.com. That blog has been running longer and gets more hits. I'm slowly working up thememoirs.org.

    Range's last blog post..Happy New Year And Season Greetings
  • Nice collection of stats. BTW, I think my Page Rank is 0, not 4.

    Mark's last blog post..Holly’s Birthday Party and Friends
  • Very cool Fili. This was a nice little year-end treat for me. I had no idea my blog was doing so well.

    My Several Worlds isn't even a year old yet, and although I love blogging, I really don't know much about the whole process. I'm not sure what I've been doing to attract so much attention. I'm still trying to work up enough nerve to host my own domain but I don't know if I'm proficient enough with computers to do so at the moment.

    Thanks again and Happy New Year!
  • John - with that said, I think Alexa does an okay job when it comes to the top 100,000 and it's the only tool available. I think it's better than nothing.
    I challenge you to make it to the Alexa top 100,000 (it'd be easier for you to get advertisers, too ;) ).
  • John - Thanks.

    Well, that's actually easy to see. Most of the Taiwan blogs, unfortunately, are not self-hosted. This is partly what's preventing the Taiwan blogosphere from really taking off.

    I would like to see at least the top-bloggers move into a normal Wordpress platform, like the Bushman and The Memoirs recently did.

    Maybe we should put on a Wordpress Taiwan camp, and help move those who are looking to boost things up a little. Tai-zhong seems like an ideal in-the-middle kind of place to do it. How about that?
  • Good work on the listings. I'd be interested in seeing which blogging software as percentages that everyone was using, ie Wordpress, Blogspot, Wordpress.com, Joomla, etc... I'm not asking you to do it though... I will guess it is Blogspot followed by Wordpress

    John's last blog post..Half Mile Radius
  • Alexa can give you a rough idea but it is too easy to manipulate the data... Just by using their tool bar yourself and doing normal maintenance/posting on your blog your site will increase in their rankings. So, if you want better Alexa rankings, go get their tool bar...

    John's last blog post..Half Mile Radius
  • Kerim - thanks.

    You're right - webpages. Google does the same thing with counting webpages, but discounting the given authority when some webpages come from the same site. Still, a web-wide link from someone is worth more than a single page link, according to all search engines I know of.

    A way for you to see where your high pagerank came from is through this following tool :
    http://www.iwebtool.com/backlink_checker?domain...

    which shows that some of the incoming links you have are from very high-authority sites (Boing-Boing?).
  • Michael - that's great. Glad to hear.

    I wish there was someway for us to try and dig deep for the lesser known high-quality Taiwan blogs that are out there and bring them up. Taiwan Bloggers is nice, Taiwan Feed was making an effort, you're doing what you can with the side-bar and weekly links but it seems like there's still something missing. We lack a community feeling, I think, that I see among Expats that live elsewhere - say, eh, in Israel.

    There's also the general problem I once mentioned we have (basic SEO etc.) that makes it difficult to notice Taiwan blogs in the search engine results about general Taiwan topics.
  • Interesting list. I didn't know Keywords had such a high page rank, despite having fewer incoming links. I suppose it is a byproduct of my other blog, Savage Minds, which is pretty well established, as well as the fact that I've been blogging for a very long time.

    A small note: You refer to incoming links as coming from "websites" when it should say "web pages" For instance, I like to Turton a lot, and I suspect these numbers represent the aggregate of those links rather than just counting my website once. I suspect that Google gives more importance to the number of websites, since it prevents people from gaming the system (which, in turn, is important for Google's advertising revenue).

    Kerim Friedman's last blog post..Warner Taiwan Image Collection
  • Formosa Neijia - thanks, that's nice to hear. T

    here are a few rankings like Alexa that help compare pageviews between websites, but I'm afraid they don't handle blogging platforms like blogspot.com and wordpress.com very well. Maybe next time ;)
  • Yeah, I thought maybe the Taiwan Bloggers list doesn't include everything, but it was the simplest RIP since all that's in there are Taiwan blogs, where as links in Taiwan Feed and Michael's are full of other sites.
    Just for the record, since you mentioned them - they're PR4, with ~8000 incoming links. ;)

    Oh well...
  • Very interesting! Thanks for this research. It gives me an idea of where I stand, at least as far as links are concerned. I always think that page hits are more important for me, though.

    I feel very honored to be on a list with some of those blogs!

    Happy New Year.

    Formosa Neijia's last blog post..Most impressive thing this year
  • Taiwan Matters isn't among the results, although perhaps it wasn't included in the list of links you used. Otherwise interesting.

    David on Formosa's last blog post..Links 31 December 2007
  • Thanks fili. Interesting, and found a couple of blogs I didn't know about.

    Michael

    Michael Turton's last blog post..Does China have fuels reserves for Taiwan Attack?
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