Afrigator ranking gymnastics
by Stii
I had to smile when I read a comment left on Diary of a gay Kenyan:
Afrigator seems to be quite fond of gymnastics in their rating of blogs.
Basically, The Gay Kenyan complained that one night he noticed that his ranking dropped suddenly into the fiery pits of Beelzebub. He went from 48th in Kenya to 271. He was deeply shocked by this. He is not the first or only person who complains about this. On the Blogs24 network, we’ve seen countless complaints.
Better I explain this, but before I do, let me say that they are not wrong. We’re not necessarily doing it right. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying there is not really a wrong or right. It is just the way we are doing it at the moment.
We’ve got an Afrigator ranking script that we run every 4 hours. (To find out exactly what the Afrigator ranking script does, see this post: Whats in an Afrigator ranking) Thus, every 4 hours, we calculate a new “score” or rank for each blog in our system. Effectively this means that the ranking can change every 4 hours!
In addition to that, we reset the Unique Visits and Page Views ranking every Sunday night round about midnight-ish. So, if you had a fantastic amount of visitors this week, next week they don’t count anymore as we start afresh.
In order to maintain a good ranking position, you need to constantly (at least on a weekly basis) have a steady flow of visitors to your site. If you have any suggestions regarding these processes, please feel free to tell us. We’re always open to suggestions! ;)
Always wondered about that. Some people have a big problem with they way you rank your sites.
I believe that you should be ranked on consistency rather than the odd “link-bait” post.
Hey Seags, can you clarify what you mean by consistency?
Constantly writing good quality articles to make sure you are at the top of the rankings every week.
Ah, okay, makes sense! That is exactly why we’ve done it this way. If you got a short burst of great traffic, you will be rewarded for that week, but drop back to your normal position if you don’t maintain it. Makes sense? Any suggestions on how to make it maybe better?
I think I will write a little article about it. iMod.co.za covers the topic relatively well but does not include everything.
Maybe another little punt for Afrigator coming from me ;)
Hi Stii,
Thanks for your response. All is forgiven and I’ll even buy you guys a few drinks when I visit Cape Town (in a gay bar naturally). Tell reception I’ll be in my pink mankini. Cheers.
Hi Tamaku, I see that it was my comment that caused Stii to smile there. Now, please get back to him and inform him that since I joined Afrigator, I have been able to log into my account only once, since every password they have sent me subsequently has been a dud. I can’t manage the acount, follow other blogs and so on, and I was just starting to consider blotting them out altogether. All in all, for me Afrigator has not been something to smile about. By the way, I’m repeating this message on his blog too.
ROFL, Tamaku! We’re looking very much forward to that!
Anengiyefa, I hear you. Did you email support? If so, when? I’d like to follow this up, please.
On that note, I’ve sorted out the problem for you. You should be able to log in with the latest password emailed to you.
I sincerely apologise for the gripe we caused you and would like to assure you that if I had known you had this issue, it would have been attended to immediately!
My blog is extremely exhausted from the gymnastics! It is a rollercoaster ride! Often steamrolling, mostly a downhill mudslide. But I take consolation in Lao Tzu’s wisdom:
LOL
That is some wise words there!
I love you guys ;o)
@Emil: Ah, thanks for the wise perspective. It’s not such a calamity after all.
@Stii: I’d love to be able to log on and add blogs that I follow to my account…one of these days. Cheers!
Hi Mama,
Sorry about that! We had a bug which is now fixed! Please try and let me know if you experience any difficulties!