Recently one of the bloggers I follow decided to stop writing his weekly link post. The reason he did so was because he noticed there weren’t that many people actually clicking on the articles he was suggesting. He also mentioned another fixture of the blogging community: The blogroll. He did away with that as well for the same reason.
This made me check out the stats on my own blogroll and he had a point. Although it’s a nice thing to have to see which blogs someone likes, people are not really reading and clicking on them. It made me decide to do away with the blogroll as well as I hadn’t maintained it (the links on it were partly outdated anyway) and looking at the statistics I noticed it wasn’t a page which was visited much. So what would I suggest if you are looking for other interesting blogs to read? I suggest to click on to the sites of the other commenters (as I have awesome readers!) or check out the various movie site spotlights I’ve done in the past.
So this week’s question:
Do you have a blogroll and do you think they are useful?
No, I don’t have a blogroll. And while it’s nice to see your name up in one of those, I don’t think they’re very useful.
I started my blog many years ago with the idea that no one was going to read it. I wasn’t being pessimistic, that was merely the focus I wanted for my blog.
Thus, my main blog has a blogroll, and I figure if someone wants to check out a link or two, they’re free to do so. It’s up to the reader.
The temptation to be contrary here is overwhelming. 😀
I do have a list of blogs and podcasts that I love on my blog, but I’m guessing they don’t get many people to click on those links. Even so, I still like to spotlight them. I really appreciate any time that someone lists me on their blogroll. I don’t think of it in terms of what it’s going to get for my blog. It’s really just a cool gesture that makes it a little easier for me to get the energy to work hard on the blog and try to make it as good as I can.
I don’t have one, and I haven’t given it much thought. I have clicked through a few on other people’s blog.
I have a blogroll, but I’m rethinking of removing it for the reasons stated.
That’s why I liked doing my Follow Friday series, even though I got a few complaints that I didn’t have a blogroll. I know I’ve never clicked on a blogroll, though I have on a rare occasion clicked on an article that someone linked or shared on Twitter. But even my Follow Friday series where I had a series of questions with the blogger I was featuring and got a lot of positive feedback from readers also didn’t generate very many clicks. Maybe 4-5 at the most. Just tough to say what works and what doesn’t.
I wouldn’t dismiss blogrolls so easily. I think the usability of blogrolls varies, depending on which blogging platform you use.
I used to be on Blogger with my old blog, and while it had some disadvantages to WordPress, which prompted me to switch when I started my current blog, it has a vast superior blogroll feature, namely that it works like an rss. The blog that has the most recent update will end up on top of the blogroll and you can see how recent the latest update was and – if you want to – the name of that blogpost. This increases the usability of this a lot. I know by testimonies from my blog readers that it increased not only the traffic to the blogs I linked to, but also the traffic to MY blog. They used my blogroll like an RSS feed, a jump-off point for their blog reading, since they liked the kind of blogs I liked.
Again: wordpress hasn’t that feature, which bugs me a lot, so the blogroll isn’t dynamic and won’t be as used. However: it’s not completely useless. While I read blogs mostly through a feedreader, it happens that I use my blogroll as a list of blookmarks.
I also think that the blogroll says something about you. It’s a way of expressing what kind of blogs and podcasts you’re attracted to, what cluster in the blogosphere you belong to. Blogging is so much about networking. Displaying a bit of that network feels natural to me. It would feel insular not to have a blogroll.
I use blogroll on my site like rss feed, without it I’d lose track of what i follow as I don’t like having my e-mail spammed and I don’t follow via e-mail.
I have a blogroll. But I do think the concept is slightly outdated
I don’t have one, partly because the theme I use looks messy with one. I can see the value for one if they have a functional use like Jessica mentioned but otherwise they are just blog names or pictures. I’m much more likely to click through from people’s comments as I can at least have an idea of what they’re going to be like, based on what comments they leave.
I have a blogroll in order to keep track of the people’s blogs I want to be able to access easily. j.k
I just use the ‘community’ widget, which shows off the gravatars of the people that have recently liked or commented. Plus it is random and updates automatically, so I dont have to do anything as such, and if people see a face they like they get the odd click 🙂
I don’t have a blogroll but I write a weekly post of various articles/blogs I find interesting from around the pop culture world. I’ve never really thought of it as a traffic grabber or to gain links, but just to share what I find with others.
The blogroll on my site is use full to me when I’m reading off my cell as all the blogs are listed so I don’t have to bookmark them. Agreed best way to find a new blog is thru the comments or LAMB
I used to have a blogroll but I got rid of it for many of the same reasons that you stated before.
People always seem to be clicking on my blogroll to sites i have linked, so it works i guess but it never seems to go the other way round haha 😀
I have one, but I’ve never thought too much about whether other people actually look at it. My blogroll is essentially just a list of sites (related to movies at least) that I usually check daily. It’s my way of avoiding rss feed and email alerts or a ton of bookmarks. I just go down the list everyday.
I do have a blogroll and I do use it regularly though I usually go to the blogs who have commented on my posts first, y’know, it’s a give or take when it comes to blogging. I have recently decided to take a link out of my blog roll as I decided that I’m no longer interested in that person’s blogging style and content. I wouldn’t say who but let’s just say it was a tough decision but I’m glad I did it.
I like the idea of blogrolls, and I have used many of them in the past to discover new blogs. However, they can be a bit overwhelming when there are dozens and dozens of links listed. This is especially an issue when the blog owner doesn’t update/maintain their blogroll either, as then you have to wade through a bunch of dead sites.
I try and update/maintain my blogroll, but I don’t do it as often as I would like. I feel if I delete a link from the blogroll I’m being unfriendly towards the blogger, but if they never comment on my site anyway, then I don’t feel so bad about it.
I think the blogroll is useful simply to keep track of sites, so I remember to comment on them(tricky to remember 20 sites in your head)
It annoys me visiting sites that have dead links, or sites that the writer has abandoned months ago, and it kind of puts me off looking through the rest of that blogroll, actually.