There's a thing called FeedSpot -- "the Internet’s Largest Human Curated Database of Bloggers and Podcasts." I'm not sure I had ever heard of it before yesterday, when I saw, quite accidently, that on July 19 they posted a ranking of "25 Best Canadian History Blogs and Websites." ranked by "traffic, social media following, domain authority, and freshness."
The top ranked blog is the Canadian Museum of History Blog. Until now I had no idea of its existence. It rates high for Facebook and Twitter engagement, but is credited with only 2 posts per quarter. I'll start looking.
Second is The Canadian Historical Association website. I didn't know the CHA had a blog, and none is mentioned on its home page, though there is a Teachers' blog somewhere on the site. FeedSpot credits the CHA website with two posts per month.
Third takes us into serious blog territory: Active History. Though FeedSpot credits it with only thirty posts a year, it must be more like twenty a month. Active History is active, it's history-focus, it has a big readership, lots of contributors, and good social media linkages. This is a high ranking that is definitely deserved.
And fourth is the blog you are reading now, Christopher Moore's History News. Our posting score, I'm pleased to say, is far and away the best by the survey's metrics, at three posts a week -- which seems about right. It would probably lead in the linking it does too, if they measured that. (Linking should be a key indicator of a blog's value, blogging being a collaborative medium.) Let me say as well that of the top five, Christopher Moore's History News is not only ranked the most active in posting. It's also the only one with a single author, no institutional mandate -- and no institutional funding. No funding at all, actually. In twenty-odd years, expenses here have been precisely zero. (Its revenues: also precisely zero. No donation box, no grants, sponsors, or advertisers, and likely to stay that way.)
If the humans at FeedSpot ranked a little for quality, it makes me think... chance for a gold here?
Fifth is the online magazine of urbanism Spacing.ca, which is a terrific magazine with interesting historical content on Canadian cities and urbanism. So sorta/kinda a "history" "blog" ... I guess.
Nice also to see NiCHE, Borealia, Daniel Francis's blog, Acadiensis blog, Canadian Legal History blog -- all on my faves list (at right) -- featured in FeedSpot's top twenty-five too. Others worth checking out too. Odd that sites like Library and Archives Canada blog, and the DCB Online didn't make the lists.
