Who's the Mummy?

March 2010 Tots100 Index of Top Mummy and Daddy Bloggers

Welcome to the March 2010 Tots100 index of the UK's top 100 parent blogs and bloggers!

This month's index of British Mummy and Daddy bloggers sees some new entries in the top 10 and 20 new entries to the index overall - so lots of new blogs to explore!

Oh, and I've said it before but I'll say it again. This is an index. It will not make your behind smaller. It does not cure wrinkles. It will not make you rich. It's not a tablet carved by God judging whether your blogs are worthy or not worthy. It's just a great way to find lots of blogs, and for bloggers to reach new readers. It's meant to be fun. Please use the index as a springing off point to find even more great blogs. Explore!

If you've just made the index for the first time, don't forget to get your blog badges by clicking on the link here.

If you’d like to be included next month, then to submit your blog to Who’s the Mummy, please leave a comment on THIS post with your blog name, Twitter ID, and blog URL, and I’ll add you to the mix next time.

Right, let’s go!

The Top100 British Parent Blogs and Bloggers March 2010:

Rank	Blog	Score	Change
1	Alpha Mummy	753	=
2	All That Comes With It	752	+6
3	A Modern Mother	748	-1
4	Who's the Mummy?	732	-1
5	Sleep is for the Weak	709	+39
6	Crystal Jigsaw	704	+1
7	Rosie Scribble	682	+18
8	Little Mummy	679	+3
9	Sticky Fingers	677	-5
10	Are We Nearly There Yet, Mummy?	665	-4
11	Baby Baby	665	-2
12	Brits in Bosnia	644	+24
13	Bambino Goodies	607	+1
14	Diary of a Desperate Exmoor Woman	607	+1
15	Single Parent Dad	601	+7
16	Noble Savage	577	-3
17	Metropolitan Mum	568	=
18	Baby Rambles	547	+27
19	English Mum	543	-14
20	Bedside Crow	527	+27
21	Violet Posy	515	+2
22	Notes from Inside my Head	511	-10
23	Wife in the North	496	-3
24	Living with Kids	494	-5
25	It's a Small World	477	+7
26	Beki's Bloggy Bits	476	+34
27	Maternal Tales	470	+1
28	The Potty Diaries	469	+18
29	Nixd Minx	468	+1
30	Babyccino	465	-14
31	Working Mum on Verge	465	+10
32	Hot Cross Mum	464	+8
33	The Mad House	461	+21
34	Insomniac Mummy	454	-16
35	Patch of Puddles	448	+33
36	Grits Day	445	+3
37	Home Baked Online	444	NEW!
38	Playing by the Book	440	+56
39	A Mother's Ramblings	439	+39
40	Dulwich Divorcee	438	+17
41	Frog Blog	434	+2
42	Brit out of Water	543	+2
43=	Bringing up Charlie	432	-14
43	Clinically Fed Up	432	+45
44	Typecast	426	NEW!
45	OMG I'm Pregnant	425	NEW!
46	Tattie Weasle	424	+16
47	Brit out of Water	421	-5
48	A Midwife's Muse	420	-15
49	Hairy Farmer Family	419	=
50	Holistic Mama	419	NEW!
51	40 Not Out	415	-17
52	Nurture Store	414	NEW
53	Millennium Housewife	412	-31
54	More Than Just a Mother	412	-44
55	Kitschy Coo	411	-22
56	Motherhood: The Final Frontier	410	-29
57	If I could Escape	405	+1
58	Wife of Bold	405	-10
59	Mummy Do That	402	+34
60	A Place of my Own	400	-4
61	Nappy Valley Girl	398	-39
62	Wives and Daughters	397	NEW!
63	Notes from Lapland	395	-11
64	Most/Least	394	+9
65	Mother at Large	389	+4
66	Parentdish	386	+9
67	Cafe Bebe	385	+28
68	The Coffee Lady	384	NEW!
69	Diary of a Surprise Mum	383	+12
70	Amy Lane	376	NEW!
71	Daddacool	374	+5
72	Not Supermum	371	-48
73	Breastfeeding Mum's Blog	368	-8
74	Live Otherwise	368	NEW!
75	Mummy Tips	367	NEW!
76	Frugal Family	355	NEW!
77	Slummy Single Mummy	354	NEW!
78	WAHM-BAM	353	-37
79	Mwa Online	352	NEW!
80	Battling On	347	NEW!
81	New Mummy	346	-44
82	The Woods and the Trees	343	-12
83	Home Office Mum	342	NEW!
84	Mumsrock	341	NEW!
85	Being a Mummy	340	-12
86	Sew Scrumptious	336	NEW!
87	Welcome to my World, Jan Mary	328	-56
88	Four Down, Mum to Go	325	-23
89	Really Rachel	319	-23
90	Family Relationships Magazine	317	+6
91	Littlesheep Learning	317	+6
92	Mommy has a Headache	314	NEW!
93	Mum's Gone To	314	NEW!
94	Yummie Mammy	310	-58
95	The Smell of Little Pong	307	-32
96	Suburban Mummy UK	305	NEW!
97	The Babbling Mummy	304	-33
98	Welsh Hills Again	302	-27
99	Is There a Plan B?	301	NEW
100	Don't Panic. RTFM.	297	-1

The Tots100 Primer

For new readers, this site hosts a monthly index of the Top 100 parent blogs and bloggers in the UK.

We’ve just updated the Tots100 index FAQ (you should now see a link over in the right hand sidebar) to explain how the index works, how the scores are calculated and what to do if you have any questions. I hope it goes some way to demystifying the process for those people who use the index, or want to be listed.

We’ve also created a new online form where people can ask questions about the index. You’ll see on the FAQ page there’s now a box where you can submit questions – and the answer to your question, along with questions posed by other users, can be read at the Tots100 FAQ Forum. I hope this will provide one place where you can see information about the index rather than ploughing through individual posts and comments.

That said, I’m very aware that not everyone blogging is a sad stats nerd like me. So I wanted to provide a really simple example of how the index is actually put together each month, with some examples.

What I’d say above all about the index is that you don’t really have to do anything much more than write great blogs to be in the index. You don’t have to submit your blogs  to most of the sites we use, or do anything in particular. The exception is Twitter - we do look at how prominent blogs are on Twitter so you might want to consider signing up if you haven't already.

Some  bloggers MAY find they also need to submit their blogs to Technorati – if you’d like to know more, read the FAQ to see how you can find out if your blog is currently listed on Technorati, and how to submit it for listing if it isn’t.

How the Index Works:

We score blogs using seven different measurements, which we've chosen because they tell us things about your blog like how many people link to you, how many people comment on your posts, do people submit your content to sites like Digg and StumbleUpon, and do people subscribe?

To read about each metric in more detail, see the FAQ. But here, we're going to show how we use the metrics to score three imaginary blogs written by Abby, Bob and Clare.

Scores 1 and 2: Google Blogsearch

We put each of the three blog addresses into Google Blogsearch with the following results:

Abby (A) has 20 links in Google Blogsearch, and 5 from this month.

Bob (B) has 200 links but only 2 are from the past month.

Clare (C) has 24 links, with none from the past month.

We then score the three blogs with the lowest scorer getting 1 point and the high scorer getting three points. Because we're looking at 2 metrics, there are 2 scores to award: 

A: 1 point + 3 points
B: 3 points + 2 points
C: 2 points + 1 point


Score 3: Yahoo Inlinks

Of course, we know that Google doesn’t pick up all the inbound links for these blogs so we head over to Yahoo to look at Inlinks, a measure of all the links to a site. By putting the address of each blog into the Site Explorer bar, we can see how many web pages link to each site. This shows that: 

Abby (A) has a total of 10,000 inlinks
Bob (B) has a total of 16,000 inlinks
Clare (C) has a total of 650 inlinks

So the scores are:

A: 2 points
B: 3 points
C: 1 point

Score 4: Postrank

We put each blog address into PostRank to see how many comments, links and shares each post on each blog has received. We discover that:

Abby (A) has posted 10 times this month, and received a total of 100 comments, Tweets, shares and bookmarks. Her average PR score is therefore 10.

Bob (B) has posted 30 times this month and received a total of 200 comments, Tweets, shares and bookmarks. His average PR score is therefore 6.66.

Claire (C) only posted twice this month but she received 130 comments, Tweets, shares and bookmarks. Her average PR score is therefore 65.

This translates into scores of:

A: 2 points

B: 1 point

C: 2 points

Score 5: Google Reader

Now, we head over to Google Reader to see how many subscribers each site has using Google. We do this by opening Reader and adding a subscription to the blog address. When the blog pops up in the viewing window, we click on ‘view details’ and we can see the number of Google subscribers for the blog. If a blog has more than one feed (sometimes happens) we do this twice.

Abby (A) has 130 subscribers so scores 3 points

Bob (B) has 65 subscribers so scores 2 points

Clare (C) has 24 subscribers so scores 1 point

Score 6: Klout

To get a blogger’s Klout score, we will look at whether the blogger has provided us with their Twitter ID already. If not, we go to their blog and look for a Twitter link on the site. Once we have the Twitter ID, we put that into the Klout website and it calculates a score for us.

Abby (A) doesn’t use Twitter and so scores 0 for Klout. She therefore scores 1 point

Bob (B) has a Klout score of 42. He scores 3 points.

Claire (C) has a Klout score of 22. She scores 2 points. 

Score 7: Technorati

Our final metric is Technorati Authority. To check a blog’s authority we put the following into the browser’s address bar: "www.technorati.com/blogs/blogaddress" where blog address is the name of the blog without a 'www' or 'http'.

Abby (A) isn’t registered with Technorati so scores zero and 1 point
Bob (B) has a Technorati Authority of 123 so scores 3 points
Clare (C) has a Technorati Authority of 65 so scores 2 points

At this point, we have seven scores for each blog, based on their ranking in each of our seven metrics. We simply add up those scores to generate a total score for each blog. Our imaginary blogs scored as follows:

Abby – scored 13 points
Bob – scored 17 points
Clare – scored 11 points

So in our imaginary index, Bob would rank first, Abby second and Clare third.

February 2010 Tots100 Index of the UK's top 100 parent blogs

Welcome to the February 2010 Tots100 index of the UK's top 100 parent blogs and bloggers!

This month's index sees some pretty big changes - 16 new entries and some great moves up the table.

Looking at the figures, many of these changes are due to the enormous number of bloggers who were involved in the Bloggers for Haiti initiative, which created LOADS of new links and Tweets among Mummy and Daddy bloggers. These links were all in a good cause - raising money for the victims of the terrible earthquake in Haiti. If you haven't donated yet, you can do so here.

New Tots100 members, don't forget to get your blog badges by clicking on the link here.

If you’re not listed this month and you haven’t yet submitted your blog to Who’s the Mummy, please leave a comment on THIS post with your blog name, Twitter ID, and blog URL, and I’ll add you to the mix next time.

Right, let’s go!

The Top100 British Parent Blogs and Bloggers February 2010:

Rank	Blog	Score	Change
1	Alpha Mummy	888	=
2	A Modern Mother	873	=
3	Who's the Mummy?	869	+1
4	Sticky Fingers	859	+1
5	English Mum	853	+7
6	Are We Nearly There Yet, Mummy?	822	+3
7	Crystal Jigsaw	777	=
8	All That Comes With It	773	+2
9	Baby Baby	766	+21
10	More Than Just a Mother	764	+32
11	Little Mummy	745	+6
12	Notes From Inside my Head	730	+16
13	Noble Savage	714	+7
14	Bambino Goodies	712	-1
15	Diary of a Desperate Exmoor Woman	710	+12
16	Babyccino	706	+6
17	Metropolitan Mum	693	+20
18	Insomniac Mummy	690	+20
19	Living with Kids	689	+4
20	Wife in the North	687	+9
21	Millennium Housewife	670	-7
22	Single Parent Dad	668	-19
23	Violet Posy	660	-7
24	Not Supermum	647	+2
25	Rosie Scribble	646	+24
26	Nappy Valley Girl	637	+20
27	Motherhood the Final Frontier	621	-2
28	Maternal Tales from the South Coast	620	+6
29	Bringing up Charlie	619	+6
30	Nixd Minx	609	+2
31	Welcome to my World, Jan Mary	602	=
32	It's a Small World	597	+19
33	Kitschy Coo	585	+15
34	40 Not Out	577	+16
35	A Midwife's Muse	572	+14
36	Brits in Bosnia	568	-18
37	New Mummy	565	+24
38	Yummie Mammy	563	+19
39	Grits Day	553	-13
40	Hot Cross Mum	550	=
41	Working Mum on Verge	546	-6
42	Brit out of Water	543	+2
43	Frog Blog	542	+12
44	Sleep is for the Weak	541	+53
45	Babyrambles	538	NEW!
46	Potty Diaries	537	-35
47	Bedside Crow	532	-4
48	Wife of Bold	529	+6
49	Hairy Farmer Family	527	+20
50	Cotton Pickin' Days	525	+2
51	WAHM-BAM	522	-18
52	Notes from Lapland	520	NEW
53	Home Office Mum	514	+14
54	The Mad House	513	+24
55	Live Otherwise	513	+13
56	A Place of My Own	509	+8
57	Dulwich Divorcee	504	+31
58	If I Could Escape	490	-38
59	Being a Mummy	482	=
60	Beki's Bloggy Bits	476	NEW
61	Breastfeeding Mums' Blog	474	-39
62	Tattie Weasle	472	+9
63	The Smell of Little Pong	470	+25
64	The Babbling Mummy	470	-10
65	Four Down, Mum to Go	467	+9
66	Country Lite	465	NEW!
67	Really Rachel	462	+5
68	Patch of Puddles	460	-23
69	Mother at Large	438	-9
70	The Wood and the Trees	460	-23
71	Welsh Hills Again	423	-12
72	Flower Fairies and Fairy Cakes	422	NEW
73	Most Least	415	+26
74	Mom or Mum Wars	412	+7
75	Parentdish	410	+3
76	Daddacool	409	+25
77	A Confused Take That Fan	406	-1
78	A Mother's Ramblings	404	-37
79	The Bush Babies	402	+1
80	Family Friendly Working	400	+1
81	Diary of a Surprise Mum	393	-8
82	More to Life than Laundry	375	NEW
83	Poke in the Eye	373	NEW
84	Mrs Trefusis	372	NEW
85	Perfectly Happy Mum	366	+1
86	Some Mothers do 'ave em	364	NEW
87	Muddling Along Mummy	363	-5
88	Clinically Fed Up	354	NEW
89	And 1 More Means 4	351	NEW
90	Single and Surviving	342	NEW
91	Glowstars	341	NEW
92	Give me the Booger	340	NEW
93	Mummy Do That	339	-31
94	Playing by the Book	338	NEW
95	Cafe Bebe	337	NEW
96	Family Relationships	329	-17
97	Littlesheep Learning	328	-22
98	The Brinkster	328	-27
99	Don't Panic. RTFM.	306	NEW
100	Musings of a Juggling Mother	304	=

PostRank for the rest of us.

Mel, the very helpful community manager at PostRank has pulled together all the Tots100 feeds into a list, which I linked to today on Twitter.

Following LOTS of questions about what this list is, why people are higher or lower or where they expect to be, and that sort of thing, I’ve been asked to a brief primer. This is just a quick post (school run in 5 minutes!) but it might explain what that list is, and why I think it's the best thing ever.

Q: What is it?
A: PostRank is a service that monitors blog feeds for something called ‘engagement’. Briefly, this is geek-speak for how involved your audience is with your blog – do they comment, do they share links to your content on Twitter or Facebook, do they submit your posts to social bookmarking sites like Digg or Del.ici.ous.

Q: Who cares about engagement?
A: Basically, PostRank sells a premium version of its data to people like PR agencies, marketers and online companies. They’re the sort of people that don’t just want to know whether lots of people read a blog; they want to know whether those people are MOVED enough to interact with the content in some way. A blog that has higher levels of interaction is generally seen as more valuable, or successful than one which doesn’t.

Q: Do I need to sign up?
A: No. PostRank automatically adds new blogs to its service as it finds them. a few blogs in the Tots100 were missing, but Mel from the company has now added all of the necessary feeds for the index to PostRank. Signing up, creating a profile, following people is only necessary if you want to use PostRank to analyse blog feeds or buy PostRank services. Otherwise, don’t worry about it. If you're not in the Tots100, you can submit a URL without signing up to the service - just enter the URL of your blog and if you get a "not found" message, there's a box to say "Tell us about this URL".

Q: How are those scores calculated?

A: PostRank looks at every blog individually. It will look at your posts each week and consider, relative to your blog as a whole, how engaged was your audience this week. It then assigns each post a score from 0 to 10. So if your blog typically gets one or two comments per post, but you post something this week that gets 40 comments and 6 Twitter mentions, there’s a good chance that post would score 10 points. If it’s an average post, it might score 5 points.

Q: How come I scored 1st/10th/50th?

A: The crucial difference is that the ‘thematic’ score you get in PostRank doesn’t compare your blog to anyone else’s. It’s just saying, compared to your blog’s average performance, this is how a particular post did, or how your blog did over a week.

So, let’s imagine Blog #1 scored an average 10 this week for his blog posts while Blog #2 scored an average of 7. This doesn’t mean Blog 1 is more engaging than Blog 2. It just means that, relative to each of their blogs’ typical performance, Blog 1 was more engaging than usual when compared to Blog 2. It’s a relative, not an absolute value.

Q: How is this different to the Tots100?

A: The Tots100 uses lots of different metrics to arrive at a score for each blog. That’s because engagement is just one part of the story – we also look at the number of  subscribers and links to a blog, for example, which aren’t measured by services like PostRank.

We do use PostRank as one of the metrics but we don’t use the relative, thematic scores as that would be largely meaningless for our purposes. We use the absolute values that underline each score. So we can use PostRank to say, “Okay, Tim scored 10 for this post, but what does that 10 mean? How many mentions did the post actually get? How many Tweets?” We then add up all the absolute points for each post over the month and average them to give a score that can be fairly compared between blogs.

Q: So does PostRank matter?

It doesn't matter. For the vast majority of bloggers, no blog stats truly 'matter'. But if you're interesting in maximising your audience or audience participation, it's always useful to understand what content really strikes a chord with your readers. With PostRank you can easily see by looking at scores, which posts are most likely to resonate. But also, if you can see you are getting all your engagement points from Twitter but nothing from Facebook, is there a way to make it easier for people to share your content on Facebook? Do you need to make it easier for people to add content to Digg? Is your engagement generally increasing or decreasing over time?

This is information that many, many bloggers won’t care about – and there’s no particular reason to worry. But if you are looking to monetise a blog (and Lord knows, there’s nothing wrong with that even if we are officially no longer in a recession) then understanding your audience better is generally a good thing.

Hope that helps!

Tots100 Update - A Sponsor

After running the Tots100 index of the UK’s top 100 parent blogs for six months now, I’m a broken husk of a woman. I twitch involuntarily at the sight of Excel spreadsheets and a misdirected URL feed can reduce me to heaving sobs.

So when some nice people came along and offered to do clever computer jiggery-pokery to so that no matter how many new blogs sign up, I’ll be able to do the whole thing in a morning – well, I was definitely interested. Then they offered me money as well, so I said yes please.

What this means is that from March, the Tots100 index will be sponsored by a fantastic family holiday company. There will be shiny new blog badges that will automatically display your position in the index, and the whole business will be much faster, and a bit less prone to human error.

A lovely bonus of this sponsorship is that there will be prizes for the bloggers in the index. I’d really like some feedback on this – what do people think  would be the fairest way to assign the monthly prize (it’s not a speedboat or anything, but will be something fun, like a voucher or camera, or similar).

My initial thought was to give the prize to the highest new entry each month as a way of welcoming new bloggers – but then this rules out everyone who’s already in the index. Then I thought about the blog that has risen furthest up the index each month – which puts the top 20 blogs at a bit of a disadvantage.

We could award to the blog scoring highest in one particular metric – say, the most linked to blog, or the blog with the most comments? Or we could just award a prize randomly (thanks Dan, for that suggestion) but is that a bit – well – random?

Really interested in your thoughts – do leave a comment!

January Tots100 index of the UK's Top 100 parent blogs and bloggers

Welcome to the January 2010 Tots100 index of the UK's top 100 parent blogs and bloggers!

I hope all our Mummy and Daddy bloggers had a fantastic Christmas and New Year, and you at least took your eye off Twitter for one day to open your presents.

It's been an interesting index to compile - you'll notice that some of the more popular bloggers have taken big tumbles in the table - I reckon this is down to some bloggers taking longer breaks from blogging over the holidays, in which case I expect to see them rebound pretty quickly again next month.

As I've said before, the index is absolutely independent and judges all blogs equally - but if you're new and you'd like to find out how it's all done, you can click on the FAQ link in the right-hand sidebar, where all the different metrics are explained in some detail. And you can also leave questions as a comment on this post.

Before we get started, then, let's remember the Golden Rules of the Tots100 index: 

1. It's an index. Not the formula for eternal life. Therefore I reserve the right to (gently) tease anyone who takes it too seriously.

2. The metrics score you based on three basic things: links; comments; readership. As Meatloaf says, two out of three ain't bad. But it won't get you in the top 10 of the Tots100. No, he didn't say the last bit.

3. If you want to boost your score, my top tips are: put a link to your Twitter account on your blog; register your blog with Technorati; make it as easy as possible for people to comment on, link to and Tweet your content. Simple.

Of course, don't forget to get your blog badges by clicking on the link here.

If you’re not listed this month and you haven’t yet submitted your blog to Who’s the Mummy, please leave a comment on THIS post with your blog name, Twitter ID, and blog URL, and I’ll add you to the mix next time.

Right, let’s go!

The Top100 British Parent Blogs and Bloggers January 2010:

Rank	Blog	Score	Change
1	Alpha Mummy	679	=
2	A Modern Mother	662	=
3	Single Parent Dad	657	+6
4	Who's the Mummy?	635	+1
5	Sticky Fingers	632	+3
6	Jo Beaufoix	629	-3
7	Crystal Jigsaw	614	+8
8	Molly Chicken	612	+12
9	Are We Nearly There Yet, Mummy?	612	+9
10	All That Comes With It	609	=
11	The Potty Diaries	596	-5
12	English Mum	596	2
13	Bambino Goodies	591	-10
14	Millennium Housewife	548	+7
15	You've Got Your Hands Full	543	+1
16	Violet Posy	539	-6
17	Little Mummy	537	=
18	Brits in Bosnia	534	+9
19	If I Could Escape	533	+4
20	Noble Savage	531	-7
21	Breastfeeding Mums' Blog	529	+14
22	Babyccino Blog	513	-15
23	Living With Kids	512	+15
24	Grits Day	501	=
25	Motherhood: the final frontier	500	+5
26	Not Supermum	499	21
27	Diary of a Desperate Exmoor Woman	497	+5
28	Notes Inside my Head	495	+9
29	Wife in the North	491	+7
30	Baby Baby	484	-18
31	Welcome to my World, Jan Mary	482	NEW
32	Nixd Minx	481	-6
33	WAHM-BAM	478	-2
34	Maternal Tales	456	-12
35	Bringing up Charlie	452	-7
36	Working Mum on Verge	450	-7
37	Metropolitan Mum	447	+28
38	Insomniac Mummy	447	-13
39	Dulwich Mum	445	+16
40	Hot Cross Mum	444	+39
41	A Mother's Ramblings	441	+2
42	More Than Just a Mother	441	=
43	Bedside Crow	437	NEW
44	Brit Out of Water	436	NEW
45	Patch of Puddles	431	+3
46	Nappy Valley Girl	523	+25
47	Kitschy Koo	408	+14
48	A Midwife's Muse	403	NEW
49	Rosie Scribble	401	+1
50	40 Not Out	397	+37
51	It's a Small World	396	+27
52	Cotton Pickin' Days	382	=11
53	Woods and the Trees	381	-8
54	The Babbling Mummy	374	=
55	Frog Blog	373	+2
56	Wife of Bold	367	-17
57	Yummie Mammy	367	-17
58	Being a Mummy	359	-24
59	Welsh Hills Again	358	+7
60	Mother at Large	357	+2
61	New Mummy	355	-1
62	Mummy Do That	351	+5
63	Thames Valley Mums	340	+36
64	A Place of my Own	340	+17
65	Rebel Mother	338	-7
66	3 Kids No Job	338	+4
67	Home Office Mum	336	+6
68	Live Otherwise	335	-24
69	Hairy Farmer Family	332	-5
70	Tattie Weasle	327	-14
71	The Brinkster	313	NEW
72	Really Rachel	312	+21
73	Diary of a Surprise Mum	312	-21
74	Four Down Mum to Go	307	+18
75	Littlesheep Learning	304	7
76	A Confused Take That Fan	303	NEW
77	Parentdish	298	-38
78	The Madhouse	297	NEW
79	Family Relationships Magazine	294	-2
80	The Bush Babies	287	-4
81	Family Friendly Working	285	-32
82	Muddling Along Mummy	280	NEW
83	Mom or Mum Wars	271	+6
84	Have a Lovely Time	265	-38
85	Tish Tash Toys	263	NEW
86	Perfectly Happy Mum	259	+2
87	The Smell of Little Pong	254	+9
88	Dulwich Divorcee	253	-29
89	And 1 More Means 4	245	+6
90	Keir Royale	244	NEW
91	Daddacool	242	-17
92	Squidgyboo	231	NEW
93	Mothers on the Verge	229	NEW
94	Family Affairs	228	-61
95	Babies Who Brunch	213	NEW
96	I Promise that I will do my Best	212	NEW
97	Sleep is for the Weak	208	-12
98	Tales from the Naughty Step	193	NEW
99	Most/Least	189	-1
100	Musings of a Juggling Mother	180	-25

JUST MISSED OUT THIS MONTH: Son Time Now, My Kids' TV and The Baby Juggler,were all within 5 points of the top 100 parent blogs. Well done!

December Tots100 Index: the UK's Top 100 parent blogs

Welcome to the December Tots100 index of the UK's top 100 parent blogs and bloggers!

Right off the bat, I'm just going to say: This is the BEST INDEX EVER.

It's a bold claim, I know. But after all the shenanigans of the last few months, this month I've gone through the metrics with a fine toothcomb. Everything has been checked, evaluated and compared so we can be confident the metrics we're using are as fair and representative as I think they can be.

We have ended up with something that is balanced between valuing longevity and volume of content on the one hand with how popular and talked about a blog is right now across all online platforms - not just the blog itself.

And I know I say it every month, but while there may be other indexes based in whole or in part on the subjective views of the companies that create them, this is the only independent index based entirely on publicly available data, that's updated every single month (although judging by how long certain companies spend copying huge tracts of information from this blog, I'd expect a copycat to come floating out of the woodwork any time now).

Before we get started, then, some points I'd like to make about this month's index:

1. It's an index. Not the formula for eternal life. Therefore I reserve the right to (gently) tease anyone who takes it too seriously.

2. The metrics score you based on three basic things: links; comments; readership. As Meatloaf says, two out of three ain't bad. But it won't get you in the top 10 of the Tots100. No, he didn't say the last bit.

3. If you want to boost your score, my top tips are: put a link to your Twitter account on your blog; register your blog with Technorati; make it as easy as possible for people to comment on, link to and Tweet your content. Simple.

Of course, don't forget to get your blog badges by clicking on the link here.

If you’re not listed this month and you haven’t yet submitted your blog to Who’s the Mummy, please leave a comment on THIS post with your blog name and blog URL, and I’ll add you to the mix next time.

Right, let’s go!

The Top100 British Parent Blogs and Bloggers:

Rank	Blog	Score	Change
1	Alpha Mummy	701	+1
2	A Modern Mother	673	-1
3=	Jo Beaufoix	653	+5
3=	Bambino Goodies	653	+11
5	Who's the Mummy?	652	+2
6	Potty Diaries	651	+2
7	Babyccino Blog	647	+4
8	Sticky Fingers	628	-2
9	Single Parent Dad	625	+3
10=	All That Comes With It	621	-6
10=	Violet Posy	621	+5
12	Baby Baby	606	-7
13	Noble Savage	605	+9
14	English Mum	604	-11
15	Crystal Jigsaw	596	+2
16	You've Got Your Hands Full	595	-6
17	Little Mummy	587	+8
18	Are We Nearly There Yet, Mummy?	577	+6
19	Bedside Crow	573	-4
20	Molly Chicken	572	+12
21	Millennium Housewife	519	21
22	Maternal Tales	506	-2
23	If I Could Escape	489	+21
24	Grits Day	486	+22
25	Insomniac Mummy	480	+5
26	Nixd Minx	480	+1
27	Brits in Bosnia	476	-8
28	Bringing Up Charlie	470	-10
29	Working Mum on Verge	468	+24
30	Motherhood: The Final Frontier	467	+18
31	WAHM-BAM	466	-9
32	Diary of a Desperate Exmoor Woman	465	-3
33	Family Affairs	462	-20
34	Being a Mummy	458	-12
35	Breastfeeding Mums Blog	456	+6
36	Wife in the North	435	=
37	Notes From Inside my Head	434	-2
38	Living With Kids	432	=
39	Parentdish	431	NEW
40	Diary of a Yummie Mammy	421	=
41	Cotton Pickin' Days	420	+6
42	More Than Just a Mother	419	-9
43	A Mother's Ramblings	410	+35
44	Live Otherwise	410	+11
45	The Woods and the Trees	407	+23
46	Have a Lovely Time	395	+26
47	Not Supermum	392	+12
48	Patch of Puddles	389	NEW!
49	Family Friendly Working	388	-18
50	Rosie Scribble	373	-7
51	Country Lite	370	NEW!
52	Diary of a Surprise Mum	357	+15
53	Wife of Bold	353	+4
54	Clareybabble	352	-2
55	Dulwich Mum	349	+25
56	Tattie Weasle	347	+18
57	Frog in the Field	343	+7
58	Rebel Mother	339	+27
59	Dulwich Divorcee	338	+2
60	New Mummy	337	-34
61	Kitschy Coo	337	-34
62	Mother at Large	336	-11
63	Flower Fairies and Fairy Cakes	332	RE-ENTRY
64	Hairy Farmer Family	327	+7
65	Metropolitan Mum	323	+22
66	Welsh Hills Again	319	NEW!
67	Mummy Do That!	318	NEW!
68	More to Life than Laundry	317	RE-ENTRY
69	Glowstars	311	NEW!
70	3 Kids no Job	310	RE-ENTRY
71	Nappy Valley Girl	306	-25
72	Sleep is for the Weak	304	+1 ;-P
73	Home Office Mum	301	RE-ENTRY
74	Daddacool	301	NEW!
75	Musings of a Juggling Mother	300	-6
76	Bush Babies	297	-11
77	Family Relationships	296	-1
78	It's a Small World	285	-33
79	Hot Cross Mum	281	-51
80	Positive Parents, Happy Kids	278	RE-ENTRY
81	A Place of my own	271	-47
82	Littlesheep Learning	273	=
83	Synchronisation of Us	265	NEW!
84=	20 Something Mum	264	+14
84=	Withenay	264	NEW!
86	Yummy Mummy Tips	259	+9
87	40 Not Out	257	-29
88	Perfectly Happy Mum	245	-25
89	Mom or Mum Wars	234	RE-ENTRY
90=	Mums Rock	233	NEW!
90=	Snaffles Mummy	231	NEW!
92	Four Down Mum to Go	226	-38
93=	Really Rachel	221	-41
93=	Some Mothers Do Ave Em	221	NEW!
95	And 1 More Means 4	220	RE-ENTRY
96	Smell of Little Pong	217	-25
97	Don't Panic RTFM	209	RE-ENTRY
98	Most/Least	198	-17
99	Thames Valley Mums	197	-27
100	View from Nappy Mountain	195	RE-ENTRY

JUST MISSED OUT THIS MONTH: Nunhead Ramblings and Angels and Urchins were both within 5 points of the top 100. Well done!

The Tots100 Primer

Every time I post the monthly Tots100 index, someone will ask me to explain how it works. So before we post the December index next week, I thought I’d explain in non-techie terms how this works. If there’s still anything you don’t understand, then do leave a Q in the comments and I’ll try to explain.

We measure all the blogs in the index using the same metrics. All metrics are evenly weighted, which means they all contribute equally to the overall score.

The first metric we look at is Google blog links and the second is Google recent blog links – how many blogs have linked to your blog, and how many of those links are from the past month? This gives us an idea of how interesting you are generally, and how interesting you’ve been lately.

Third, we look at Yahoo Inlinks, and calculate how many links there are to your blog from websites (not just blogs) – but we do exclude links from your own site to your own archives – what are known as self-referring links.

Fourth, we use Technorati Authority, which is a value calculated by Technorati which reflects how many blogs link to you – and how influential those blogs are. Crucially, Technorati Authority is based on the number of different blogs that link to you – so a blog scoring 100 links from 10 different sites will score less highly than a blog with 50 links from 50 different sites.

The fifth metric we use is Post Rank, a tool that measures how interactive your website is, based on Tweets, social bookmarks and so on, measuring each post on a scale of 1 to 10. We take an average of all your scores over a one month period.

Sixth, we look at how many readers you have on the biggest RSS reader – Google. This isn’t a measure of your total traffic but by comparing the figure for ALL blogs we can draw comparisons and make some fair assumptions about relative popularity.

Seventh, we look at Twitter – rather than just counting followers, we use Klout – an analytic tool that gives you a score out of 100 based on several factors, including how many followers you have relative to how many people you follow, how many of your Tweets are retweeted, and how influential your own followers are.

We collate this data for around 300 blogs each month. Once the data’s collected, we eliminate any blog scoring zero in more than two categories – on the basis that they’re not going to be able to reach the top 100. The remaining blogs are then scored using a simple multimetric algorithm – we take each metric and rank the blogs from low to high, awarding the lowest scoring blog 1 point and the top scoring blog 100+. We then add up the seven scores to give a total score, which is then ranked to produce the top 100. 

Want to boost your score?

   1. Register with Technorati
   2. Make it easy for people to share your content - Tweet this buttons, link your blog to your Facebook account, link them both to Twitter.
   3. Make it easy for people to subscribe with a big "Subscribe Now!" button on your site.
   4. Link out and eventually people will link back to you.
   5. Make it easy for new readers to find you - join online forums, put your blog address in your email signature, search optimise your headlines and posts. 
   6. Be yourself. First and foremost, blog for you, have fun with it - people can tell, you k

November 2009: Top 100 UK Parent Blogs and Bloggers

Welcome to the November Tots100 index of the UK's top 100 parent blogs and bloggers!

This past month has seen a lot of debate around the changes happening to UK parent blogs - and the increase in competitiveness and commercialism in the blogosphere. Some people have suggested that ranking blogs spoils the fun of blogging, or somehow means we're encouraging rampant competition between bloggers.

So, I've thought about it a lot and here's the thing: the Tots 100 index of the UK's top parenting blogs was put together for two reasons. First, to provide one place where people could easily find out about and read new blogs. Second, it helps people to compare how popular their blog is compared to other blogs, over time.

The amount of traffic the index gets, and the number of click-throughs on the blogs included within the index tells me that people love using the index. This is A Good Thing. I also know from the comments I receive that people enjoy seeing their blog grow in popularity over time, and to see how the effort they put in to writing their blog is reflected in the index. Also, lots of people want to join the index. And I happen to think that's also A Good Thing.

I've seen a couple of other indexes of parent blogs in recent months and I'll say this - The Tots100 index of UK parent blogs is the ONLY index I've seen that is based 100% on objective statistics and which is updated regularly to show the changing popularity of the UK's top parent blogs. Anyone can be included in the index if they write great content that people want to read and share - and I'm really proud of that. This index isn't part of any single community or network, and it wasn't created to sell a product or service to PR agencies.

Life is competitive, and I happen to think competition is no bad thing - until you start to take it too seriously. Writing a blog just to score links and subscribers and rank highly in an index doesn't work, though - I've watched blogs do it, and I can guarantee you, it doesn't work. The index is smarter than that.

More importantly, writing a blog just to score points on an index must be really dull. The blogs that really score highly in the index are those that are lively, thriving, interactive blogs written by bloggers who have thrown themselves headlong into the Mummy blogging community and feel passionately about what they do.

I love watching these blogs and their position in the index each month, seeing new blogs growing their audience and influence, and building relationships with other bloggers. I'm always a bit excited when a blog I love lands in the index for the first time. It's great fun - and I like to think the index helps great blogs to find readers, and readers to find great blogs.

If you don't like it - inclusion in the index is 100% voluntary. Leave a comment asking not to be included, and you won't be. Simple as that. Reading the index? Even more voluntary. But if you take the index for what it is, I think you'll like it, I really do.

Rant over, here's this month's index!
This is the first chance I’ve had to get online since this was first posted, so excuse the late clarification. Blogger’s privilege.

This month, Technorati stopped publishing Technorati Reactions, one of the figures we used to use to rank blogs in the index. Reactions was one of three metrics in the index (along with Yahoo Inlinks and Google Blogsearch) that tended to favour older blogs – because if you’ve been around longer, you naturally tend to have more links pointing to your blog.

Without Reactions, we’re now in a position where there are two metrics that tend to favour older blogs, and five metrics that treat all blogs equally by just looking at recent links, traffic and activity. That small change has made a big difference this month – so you see some blogs moving quite a long way UP the table, and others moving quite a long way DOWN the table.

Some will obviously be miffed by this, and particularly those bloggers that benefited most from the previous metrics. But this adjustment couldn’t be avoided and I’ve done my best to explain why I think it’s actually fairer, and a good thing in that it makes it a little easier for newer blogs to get on the index – and making it a little easier has made a BIG difference, which I think is fantastic. And more interesting, after all.

As regards any other comments, I refer you to my previous remark: “Competition is no bad thing – until you start to take it too seriously”.  

Of course, don't forget to get your blog badges by clicking on the link here.

If you’re not listed this month and you haven’t yet submitted your blog to Who’s the Mummy, please leave a comment on THIS post with your blog name and blog URL, and I’ll add you to the mix next time.

Right, let’s go!

The Top100 British Parent Blogs and Bloggers:

Rank	Blog	Score	Change
1	A Modern Mother	580	=
2	Alpha Mummy	571	-1
3	English Mum	534	+2
4	All That Comes With It	519	+2
5	Baby Baby	504	+16
6	Sticky Fingers	502	+4
7	Who's the Mummy?	501	+8
8=	Potty Diaries	500	-4
8=	Jo Beafoix	500	-5
10	You've Got Your Hands Full	494	+9
11	Babyccino Blog	485	+1
12	Single Parent Dad	474	-1
13	Family Affairs	467	+3
14	Bambino Goodies	463	=
15	Bedside Crow	438	+28
16	Violet Posy	432	+1
17	Crystal Jigsaw	431	-10
18	Bringing up Charlie	427	-5
19	Brits in Bosnia	423	-4
20	Maternal Tales	414	+2
21	Noble Savage	408	-9
22	WAHM-BAM	400	+7
22=	Being a Mummy	400	+12
23	Not Wrong, Just Different	396	+34
24	Are We Nearly There Yet, Mummy?	395	+13
25	Little Mummy	386	=
26	New Mummy	376	+6
27	Nixd Minx	358	+6
28	Hot Cross Mum	354	+20
29	Diary of a Desperate Exmoor Woman	351	-1
30	Insomniac Mummy	349	+29
31	Family Friendly Working	348	+15
32	Molly Chicken	342	-24
33	More Than Just a Mother	339	-6
34=	A Place of My Own	338	+60
34=	Notes Inside My Head	338	-15
36	Wife in the North	337	-18
37	Kitschy Coo	334	+60
37	A Midwife's Muse	332	+27
39	Living with Kids	328	+52
40	Diary of a Yummie Mammy	321	-10
41	Breastfeeding Mums Blog	320	+11
42	Millennium Housewife	317	-16
43	Rosie Scribble	316	+46
44	If I Could Escape	313	-5
45	It's a Small World	312	+47
46	Grits Day	312	NEW!
47	Cotton Pickin' Days	311	+9
48	Motherhood: The Final Frontier	303	+6
49	Littlesheep Learning	302	+38
50	Clareybabble	301	-5
51	Mother at Large	300	-9
52	Really Rachel	299	+31
53	Working Mum on Verge	294	-15
54	Four Down, Mum to Go	293	+28
55	Live Otherwise	285	-2
56	Nappy Valley Girl	279	-15
57	Wife of Bold	279	+6
58	40 Not Out	276	+32
59	Not Supermum	266	-28
60	Jan Mary	265	+4
61	Dulwich Divorcee	264	-37
62	Thames Valley Mums	259	-13
63	Perfectly Happy Mum	254	-7
64	Frog Blog	253	-6
65	Bush Babies	252	-18
66	Rebel Mother	243	+5
67	Diary of a Surprise Mum	239	+5
68	The Woods and the Trees	230	NEW!
69	Musings of a Juggling Mother	226	+16
70	Give me the Booger	225	+25
71	Smell of Little Pong	224	+27
72	Have a Lovely Time	217	+12
73	Sleep is for the Weak	217	=
74	Tattie Weasle	215	NEW!
75	Hairy Farmer Family	211	NEW!
76	Family Relationships Magazine	209	-9
77	The Brinkster	203	-2
78	A Mother's Ramblings	200	-4
79	Baby Rambles	198	+7
80	Dulwich Mum	198	-40
81	Most/Least	188	+18
82	Muddling Along Mummy	187	-13
83	Little Green Fingers	178	NEW!
84	Wives and Daughters	308	NEW!
85	The Mad House	164	NEW!
86	Adventures of a Sleepless Toddler	162	NEW!
87=	Metropolitan Mum	158	+9
87=	Working Mum	158	NEW!
88	Mothers on the Verge	157	-50
89	Miss Meep's Guide to Living	143	-24
90	Tales from the Naughty Step	137	NEW!
91	The Baby Juggler	132	NEW!
92	Family of Five	127	NEW!
93	Keir Royale	124	NEW!
94	Soapbox Mummy	123	NEW!
95	Yummy Mummy Tips	120	NEW!
96	London Baby	103	NEW!
97	Nappy Mountain	102	NEW!
98	20 Something Mum	96	NEW!
99	Family Treehouse	78	NEW!
100	Playing by the Book	70	NEW!

JUST MISSED OUT THIS MONTH: Cafe Bebe and Arabella Miller were both within 5 points of the top 100. Well done! 

Top 100 UK Parent Blogs and Bloggers - October 2009

Welcome to the October Tots100 index of the UK's top 100 parent blogs and bloggers! The British Mummy (and Daddy) blogging scene is getting exciting - we've got a brand new number one blog this month and no fewer than 17 new entries to the index - so lots of new reading for everyone!

I spent quite a lot of time putting together the blog index this month - with so many new entries, there was quite a bit of work. To avoid that happening next month, here's my stern moment: while I love people suggesting new blogs for us to include, please don't nominate your blog each month - if you've nominated it once, I promise it's in there. If you nominate it again, it ends up being scored twice, and it messes up my calculations. This tends to make me cranky.

A second issue that came up this month: we now have a couple of bloggers who write more than one blog. What we've found is that these blogs are sometimes linking to each other repeatedly - and since the index scores partly based on links, it's elevating the scores of both blogs. From next month, I am going to impose a limit - so that if Blog A and Blog B are written by the same person, you can only score for ONE link between those two blogs each month. I think this will make the index fairer for those bloggers who only write one blog. But feedback, as ever, is welcome.

Apart from that, usual rules apply. Read the FAQ for details of how these figures are created, and contact me here or via Twitter if you want to know more.

Of course, don't forget to get your blog badges by clicking on the link here.

If you’re not listed this month and you haven’t yet submitted your blog to Who’s the Mummy, please leave a comment on this post, and I’ll add you to the mix next time.

Right, let’s go!

The Top100 British Parent Blogs and Bloggers:

Rank	Blog	Score	Change
1	A Modern Mother	834	+3
2	Alpha Mummy	826	-1
3	Jo Beaufoix	772	+4
4	The Potty Diaries	764	+2
5	English Mum	761	+10
6	All That Comes With It	758	+6
7	Crystal Jigsaw	754	+3
8	Molly Chicken	752	-7
9	Noble Savage	734	+2
11	Single Parent Dad	730	-2
12	Babyccino Blog	719	+2
13	Bringing Up Charlie	712	-5
14	Bambino Goodies	709	+2
15	Who's the Mummy?	692	+4
16	Family Affairs and Other Matters	679	+4
17	Violet Posy	663	+4
18	Wife in the North	659	-5
19	You've Got Your Hands Full	656	+17
20	Notes Inside my Head	649	-2
21	Baby Baby	635	+35
22	Maternal Tales	630	+8
23	Brits in Bosnia	628	+10
24	Dulwich Divorcee	626	+4
25	Little Mummy	624	+10
26	Millennium Housewife	611	-3
27	More Than Just a Mother	607	-3
28	Diary of a Desperate Exmoor Woman	603	-11
29	WAHM-BAM	590	-3
30	Yummy Mammie	586	NEW!
31	Not Supermum	581	-2
32	New Mummy	546	+13
33	Nixd Minx	544	-11
34	Being a Mummy	539	+19
35	Mummy Do That	531	+7
36	Flower Fairies and Fairy Cakes	525	+1
37	Are We Nearly There Yet, Mummy?	522	+4
38	Working Mum on Verge	521	-6
39	Crunchie Mummy	519	=
40	Dulwich Mum	501	+3
41	Nappy Valley Girl	496	-16
42	Country Lite	493	-4
43	The Bedside Crow	488	-16
44	Mother at Large	487	+15
45	Clareybabble	481	+12
46	Family Friendly Working	477	-15
47	The Bush Babies	476	+10
48	Hot Cross Mum	464	+52
49	Thames Valley Mums	462	=
50	Home Office Mum	458	-4
51	Parentdish	455	+9
52	Breastfeeding Mums Blog	454	+2
53	Live Otherwise	434	+10
54	Motherhood: the final frontier	430	-14
55	Nunhead Ramblings	422	-21
56	Perfectly Happy Mum	421	+5
57	Not Wrong, Just Different	418	-9
58	Frog Blog	412	-3
59	Insomniac Mummy	410	NEW!
60	Grits Day	408	NEW!
61	Rebel Mother	407	-11
62	OMG I'm Pregnant	395	-15
63	Wife of Bold	394	+22!
64	Jan Mary	388	NEW!
65	A Midwife's Muse	388	-14
66	Cotton Pickin' Days	387	-14
67	Family Relationships	386	+5
68	Mrs Trefusis Takes a Taxi	375	-4
69	Muddling Along Mum	374	NEW!
70	Don't Panic. RTFM.	369	+6
71	A Confused Take That Fan	360	-6
72	Diary of a Surprise Mum	352	+3
73	Sleep is for the Weak	348	NEW!
74	A Mother's Ramblings	344	NEW!
75	More to Life Than Laundry	343	-8
76	Single and Surviving	343	NEW!
77	3 Kids No Job	342	-17
78	I Promise That I Will Do My Best	340	-4
79	The Brinkster	339	-13
80	And One More Means Four	336	+2
81	Littlesheep Learning	358	-8
82	Some Mothers do 'ave em	330	-10
83	Really Rachel	321	+5
84	Have a Lovely Time	309	-7
85	Musings of a Juggling Mother	308	-2
86	Babyrambles	307	NEW!
87	Littlesheep Learning	306	-6
88	Self-Employed Mum	305	NEW!
89	Rosie Scribble	304	-9
90	Forty Not Out	300	-12
91	Living With Kids	299	NEW!
92	It's a Small World	298	+7
93	Caution: Woman at Work	297	NEW!
94	A Place of my Own	273	-10
95	Mom or Mum Wars	270	-27
96	Metropolitan Mum	268	NEW!
97	Kitschy Koo	265	=
98	The Baby Juggler	259	-9
99	The Smell of Little Pong	255	-7
100	Most/Least	251	-13

JUST MISSED OUT THIS MONTH: Poke in the Eye, Keir Royale, Family of Five and Mothers on the Verge were all within 10 points of the top 100. Well done!