Not long after I discovered the concept of blogging I became aware of the convention known as the ‘blogroll’; the list of blogs, usually placed in the sidebar, that reads as a list of other recommended blogs (you’ll find one to your right and down a bit).
As the web is built on the concept of links, I took it as read that this was a key defining element of what made a blog. Moreover to be listed on a blogroll was to be included in that blog’s roll of honour. Not really so. Very few visitors ever click on the links in a blogroll. The blogroll here lists just four blogs. Two are WordPress links which were automatically generated when I set up the blog and it seemed a bit churlish to delete them. One is for PRMediaBlog where I also post and the fourth is a link to Todd Defren’s PR Squared blog, which I included beacuse I believe that Todd is ‘the’ trailblazer for PR 2.0 or digital PR. Of the four as the only link with no vested interest, it could be considered to be the ‘control’ in terms of click through. The results are not spectacular. The first 5000 visits to this blog generated just three visits to PR Squared or a 0.06% click through rate.
Blogrolls just don’t generated much traffic. I predict that Todd’s blog will get more visits from this single post than from three months on the blog roll…but that’s up to you not me.
PR and the Social Web 