20 Comments

1. 

   Melissa Dobson on January 29, 2010 at 8:38 am

   Thank you for providing this list, Jo.

   I’ve been a part of several wine marketing discussions where the topic of assessing wine blogs has been raised. Many winery owners/marketers struggle to determine which wine blogs are being read by their customers and prospective customers and where they should concentrate their relationship building efforts, especially with so many wine blogs out there. My advice is to look to several sources including a list similar to this one, ala wine’s ranking, Wine.Alltop.com, and by asking your customers about who they’re reading. I also like to mention that Twitter and Facebook influence are important too. Are there any other listings or advice I should add?

   Congratulations to you and everyone on the list. I feel fortunate and happy to be listed.
   Melissa

2. 

   Jo on January 29, 2010 at 9:05 am

   Melissa,

   I also check out the ala.wine list. On that one, I come in at 42 on that one. All lists shift us around based on certain criteria. The Wine.Alltop.com one… anyone that’s not on it, submit your blog, and there you go!

   Twitter and Facebook are huge, and are important to the social media marketing mix… as are blog.

   The other piece of the social media pie is the social media group sites that live on Ning. These groups seem to be becoming less relevant, though, because so many companies are gravitating toward Facebook, for the same reason… They’re just like the Ning sites, and you only have to go to one neighborhood to find so many of them.

   I do get some traffic and new fans on my Petite Sirah Ning site (http://petitesirah.ning.com/), so it’s worth it being on the Internet.

   I almost need – I DO need – a check list, as a marketer, for what I’ve visited each day.

   Twitter (don’t forget #ff)
   Facebook
   wine=-blog.org visits for comments (after I’ve written my stories)
   Ning
   Four Square (http://foursquare.com/) Yup… now we’ve got to tell everyone where we are via our Blackberries

   What am I missing… ?

3. 

   Melissa Dobson on January 29, 2010 at 9:21 am

   Jo,

   I’ve been checking back in with LinkedIn although I tend to neglect it. I’ve found good info there in Groups and discussions. I’ve had the best results on Twitter for inbound inquiries for my business. I’m not as familiar with Ning so good to hear your experience with it. We’ll see where this all goes.

4. 

   Jo on January 29, 2010 at 9:30 am

   Oh, yeah… Linked in and all the others… I feel like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland… Remember?

   “Who… Are… You?!”

5. 

   gwendolyn alley aka art predator on January 29, 2010 at 9:59 am

   Congrats Jo!

   And an interesting post and list! 40,000,000 entries?? hard to get all those zeros right!

   Here’s a toast to you–clink!

   (and may I join you on that list one day! I know, I need to make more efforts on Wine Predator and less on Art Predator!)

6. 

   Jo on January 29, 2010 at 12:02 pm

   Thanks, Gwendolyn.

   Google will someday live up to its name! The day the zeros are off the page… Meanwhile, “wine blog” with 40 million? Whew!

   Thanks for the clink! I know what you’re clinking with ;^)

   I once had Finickie Foodie as a URL, but found it impossible to do both; although, both were passions! With clients, PSILY as a constant, and wine-blog, I had to let Finickie Foodie go as a Website. No one knows better than you (Jose excluded) how I could have really worked that site!

   I like both of yours, though, because you can go back and forth…

   You’ll get there, because you’ve got the passion.

7. 

   1WineDude on January 29, 2010 at 2:51 pm

   Oh, I thought that list was by age of author, with the oldest first??? 🙂

   What’s amazing is how many of these sites I’d never heard of before seeing that list!

8. 

   Chris on January 29, 2010 at 3:35 pm

   Neat List, Jo.

   I’ve just started wine reading and wine blogging so I only recognize maybe 20 of those. Of the bazillion wineries out there it’s
   interesting to me that a small winery such as Syncline has such a highly ranked blog.

   I took my que from Joe with my own naming strategy, and am trying to get as close to the bottom on every alphabetical list that I can. 🙂

9. 

   Jo on January 29, 2010 at 4:29 pm

   Joe,

   LOL… Well, they mixed it up, because Alder could be one of my kids… LOL continuing.

   Same for me on knowing who they all are – by about 50 percent.

   My techie husband told me a long time ago, frequency and longevity would play into how Google picks up anything. That should put you, 1WineDude at the top. (You have made it to the top of more prestigious lists, I must say, and for good reason.)

   My real motivation? How was I ever going to get on any other list, any other way than list one, so I went for it.

   I’m so bad…

10. 

    Jo on January 29, 2010 at 4:31 pm

    Chris,

    I think we’re all so funny.

11. 

    David Honig on January 30, 2010 at 4:48 am

    Anything that puts Good Grape and 1WineDude in the 60s is suspect. Running both Plate Press: The online wine magazine and The Palate Press Advertising Network, I have a pretty good idea about traffic of a lot of wine sites, and the list, above, is far more a measure of the number of posts than the number of viewers, number of comments, cross-linking, or quality of posts. That is not meant to denigrate anybody near the top of the list, for many are superlative, just as an observation of the lists overall flaws.

12. 

    Jo on January 30, 2010 at 7:39 am

    My question is suspect of what?

    I agree that on a Top 100 of the most read and respected blogs, Good Grape and 1WineDude belong right at the top. No argument from me on that one.

    But, this isn’t, or wasn’t asked to be, a list of popularity delivered by Google.

    It’s a search list of “wine blog,” and then what was simply delivered into my computer when I searched.

    However Google puts that all together is what gets spit out… and it’s as you note: “a measure of the number of posts than the number of viewers, number of comments, cross-linking, or quality of posts.”

    This doesn’t make it suspect, or even flawed. It is what it is… when asked for “wine blog” this is the Google list. I coined it “Top 100,” because I didn’t want to keep going to the Google 40,000,000 responses.

13. 

    1WineDude on January 31, 2010 at 7:28 am

    I gave up long ago trying to understand calculations made my Google and (especially) Technorati. I mean, it’s probably just me – PostRank.com does a great job explaining their ranking process & I *still* don’t understand it.

    Back to writing, I guess! 🙂

14. 

    Jo on January 31, 2010 at 8:13 am

    Joe,

    Honestly, it’s all about the writing, regardless of all else.

    We’re funny creatures that need to also analyze, in our spare time.

    Back to writing, for me, too! 🙂

15. 

    Joon S. on February 1, 2010 at 6:56 pm

    Thank you for the shout-out! Obviously, I don’t feel that my blog is “better” than anyone else’s–but I am humbled to be in such good company. And heck, when you’re in law school you need all the positive reinforcement you can get!

    Sincerely,

    Joon S.
    http://vinicultured.com
    (that’s with a “d” at the end!)

16. 

    Jo on February 2, 2010 at 6:30 am

    Joon,

    Good job on all counts. Best wishes in law school. That’s a huge endeavor. I’m sure you’re working really hard so there’s no “d” at the end of that one!

17. 

    ryan on February 3, 2010 at 2:21 am

    This list has been generated by a google search on a US based computer with custom search. If you turn off location based search this list changes greatly. Google is no longer nuetral, every computer out there will yeild different results unless you turn off all customizations, location services, and anything language based. In Spain my results are very different

    Also if you want to be a good wine blog, ranking for the words “wine blog” are pretty much useless. Unless your audience is people looking to learn about wine blogging or want to hire you to build a wine blog. What you want to rank for is what you write about, and what you want your readers to be looking for. If your a California wine blog writing about Zinfandel, you better rank for “Zinfandel” not “wine Blog”.

18. 

    Jo on February 3, 2010 at 7:20 am

    Hi, Ryan,

    I hope you and Gabriella are doing well, since I saw you last at the EWBC! Thanks for organizing. It was stupendous.

    Thanks, also, for the suggestion on how to get a neutral reading. And, yes, every computer will yield different results. That’s why I clarified that it was from my computer.

    This list isn’t about being a good wine blog, by the way. It was about showing up in a list’s ranking under the search phrase, “wine blog.”

    Fine writing is another category, and even that is as subjective as a fine wine.

    When I first got into the wine business (’92), I knew if Robert Parker scored a wine with a high ranking, I wouldn’t like the wine. (It was too complex for my novice palate.) Today, I will think much differently about a high Parker score, and will appreciate it in a much different light. My palate’s development is much different, 18 years later.

    All rankings are subject, is my point, regardless of the subject matter.

    Writing is pretty much that way, too. What each of us values is from a personal perspective… So, even if I’m reading a list from a search of “best wine blogs,” I may not agree with it, based on my own preferences for writing style, sentence construction, spelling and grammar, etc. (I take all of that into account, because of my writing background.)

    This is what makes the world go round… our own vision of what we appreciate.

    Agree that if you want to rank for Zinfandel, you’d better write a lot about it. Find your target and build your base… The rest will follow, and you’ll fall into that category on a Google search.

    I just typed in, “Iberian wine blog.” You, of course, are listed first. Congrats! Great job.

19. 

    Scot Burns on March 26, 2010 at 2:30 pm

    You should also cross reference the top 100 blogs with Alexa Traffic and the number of articles pointing to the blog.

20. 

    Jo on March 27, 2010 at 8:16 am

    Hey, Scott,

    Great resource. http://www.alexa.com/search;0?q=wine+blogs&r=topsites_index&p=bigtop. Amazing. I didn’t know about this one.

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