The Directory of Best Indian [English] Blogs is coming out tomorrow, the 1st of June. The Directory has 326 blogs. This will be the eighth edition of the Directory.
If you have been visiting Top Blogs, you'd know that this Directory is compiled manually in nearly four months though the job of finding good Indian blogs is a year-long exercise. We proactively look at thousands of blogs on Indian English blogosphere by browsing the web, searching blogs with different keywords, copying social networking and bookmarking links, and looking at aggregators and blogrolls. In addition, we get hundreds of submissions on email and through comments on posts. Since the Directory is manually compiled, we visit many hundred-thousands of webpages for checking and rechecking the blogs for different parameters.
We changed our approach in compilation of the Directory this year. Two years back, our database of Indian English blogs had bulged to about 60,000. We deleted a large number of dormant blogs but the list, with more additions in two years, again went up to nearly 40 k blogs. This year, we did a painful operation on the list: in one stroke we removed all the blogs of the following type:
A third of blogs in the Directory are either new or have come to the directory after a gap.
We have been observing that the proportion of professional blogs among new blogs has gone up significantly. A good number of new bloggers now blog with the aim of making money and their blogs tend to be professionally maintained. On the other hand, a very big number of hobby/ personal bloggers - even long-established ones - are turning erratic in updating their blogs.
The professional bloggers, however, are missing one point while designing their blogs. The focus among some of them seems to be that their blog must look most modern, i.e. with effects that are not available in others' blog. Most such blogs are created on wordpress CMS; they are appealing and admittedly have a sophisticated design, but have sacrificed navigation and visitor's convenience for the sake of design.
In the Directory, blogs are arranged alphabetically based on the operative part of the URL. The category-wise version of the Directory will be issued in about two weeks.
Your feedback on the Directory would be highly appreciated.You could send an email at [email protected] or comment on the Directory page itself. If you consider that some very good blog has been dropped or not included, kindly let us know.
For those whose blogs find a place in the Directory:
We have been issuing the Badge of ITB directory for the past few years. We did not issue it last time because we were told that Google now finds badges as an unnatural link to a website. But when many bloggers wrote to us asking for the badge, we took the risk of annoying Google, but found that Google understands value of a badge when it is placed voluntarily and not for any monetary or SEO consideration. We have a new badge for the 2018 Directory. You may like to put it on your blog if you feel that our selection has been fair and you are proud to be in the Directory. Putting the badge is completely voluntary.
Here is a preview of the badge. Actual badge will be there in the Directory page, on 1st June.
If you have been visiting Top Blogs, you'd know that this Directory is compiled manually in nearly four months though the job of finding good Indian blogs is a year-long exercise. We proactively look at thousands of blogs on Indian English blogosphere by browsing the web, searching blogs with different keywords, copying social networking and bookmarking links, and looking at aggregators and blogrolls. In addition, we get hundreds of submissions on email and through comments on posts. Since the Directory is manually compiled, we visit many hundred-thousands of webpages for checking and rechecking the blogs for different parameters.
We changed our approach in compilation of the Directory this year. Two years back, our database of Indian English blogs had bulged to about 60,000. We deleted a large number of dormant blogs but the list, with more additions in two years, again went up to nearly 40 k blogs. This year, we did a painful operation on the list: in one stroke we removed all the blogs of the following type:
- that had not been updated even for four months between June 2017 and May 2018;
- whose regularity and bloggers' identity were extremely difficult to check; and
- the ones with major flaws relating to content, language and design.
A third of blogs in the Directory are either new or have come to the directory after a gap.
We have been observing that the proportion of professional blogs among new blogs has gone up significantly. A good number of new bloggers now blog with the aim of making money and their blogs tend to be professionally maintained. On the other hand, a very big number of hobby/ personal bloggers - even long-established ones - are turning erratic in updating their blogs.
The professional bloggers, however, are missing one point while designing their blogs. The focus among some of them seems to be that their blog must look most modern, i.e. with effects that are not available in others' blog. Most such blogs are created on wordpress CMS; they are appealing and admittedly have a sophisticated design, but have sacrificed navigation and visitor's convenience for the sake of design.
In the Directory, blogs are arranged alphabetically based on the operative part of the URL. The category-wise version of the Directory will be issued in about two weeks.
Your feedback on the Directory would be highly appreciated.You could send an email at [email protected] or comment on the Directory page itself. If you consider that some very good blog has been dropped or not included, kindly let us know.
For those whose blogs find a place in the Directory:
We have been issuing the Badge of ITB directory for the past few years. We did not issue it last time because we were told that Google now finds badges as an unnatural link to a website. But when many bloggers wrote to us asking for the badge, we took the risk of annoying Google, but found that Google understands value of a badge when it is placed voluntarily and not for any monetary or SEO consideration. We have a new badge for the 2018 Directory. You may like to put it on your blog if you feel that our selection has been fair and you are proud to be in the Directory. Putting the badge is completely voluntary.
Here is a preview of the badge. Actual badge will be there in the Directory page, on 1st June.
