It can be hard to find the bits of the web that will be of interest to us and avoid the myriad of backwaters and blind alleys. Too often it is difficult to see the wood for the trees.
The front page rankings on any Google search give us a pretty good idea of sites that are relevant but search can be a fairly blunt instrument. We PR people need to know more and a site’s popularity is only one measure. We also need to focus on the concept of ‘authority’. Broadly authority on the web is the same as authority elsewhere but on the web it can be measured. A very good example of this is via Technorati one of the most widely recognised ways of measuring ‘citizen media’.
Technorati.com includes the Technorati Authority number for blogs. This means the number of blogs linking to a site in the previous six months; the bigger the number, the greater the authority. The Technorati Top 100 lists the blogs with the most authority. Create content that is interesting and other bloggers are more likely to link to your blog thereby increasing your authority.
There are lots of other guides to influential blogs for example the AdAge Power 150 lists the most influential media and marketing blogs.
PR and the Social Web 