Obviously, the team here at Swish Appeal is passionate about women's basketball and takes some pride in what we do.
But I have to admit, being notified that Swish Appeal is ranked #17 on Wikio's latest list of basketball blogs is still a bit surprising (even though we've been on the list previously).
So let's be honest and just ask a question: how does a women's basketball blog get ranked ahead of any men's basketball blog (given general popularity and readership)?
"Our rankings are not compiled by page views but shares of your page amongst readers," wrote a Wikio representative via email. "Therefore we hope they show the most influential blogs, those that people comment on, link to and tweet about."
From the official blurb:
The position of a blog in the Wikio ranking depends on the number and weight of the incoming links from other blogs. Our algorithm accords a greater value to links from blogs placed higher up in the ranking.
A blog linking another blog is only counted once a month i.e. if blog A links to blog B 10 times in a given month, it is only counted as having linked to that blog once that month. The weight of any link decreases over time. Also, if a blog always links to the same blog, the weight of these links is decreased.
Only links found in RSS feeds are counted. Blogrolls are not taken into account.
As I know that I read a number of blogs in that top 20 list - and you'll note that SB Nation blogs dominate the list - it's an honor to even be mentioned and a credit to the team of people writing for the site.
But how about the implicit claim about being the best women's basketball blog on the web?
That's a strong statement after a little over a year in existence...and I'm not entirely sure that would hold up in a survey of women's basketball fans...so I'll leave that up to others to debate...and wouldn't be offended if someone challenged us on that.
For now, I'll just try to take a page from Seattle Storm coach Brian Agler's book: we'll just take it one day at a time and continue to focus on us.