Last week, I entered the Cato@Liberty blog you’re reading in the healthcare100.com rankings of health care blogs. Which might have been unfair. Most or all of the blogs in that ranking are exclusively focused on health care. Cato@Liberty covers many other issues and could get credit for visits and incoming links that have nothing to do with health care. So I made sure to enter only the health-care-specific URL and RSS feed.
The results (as of July 2, 2007) are in: Cato@Liberty (Health Care) tied with three other blogs for 24th. That put it ahead of such popular blogs as:
- WSJ.com: Health Blog and Health Affairs Blog (tied for 34th),
- Insure Blog and Healthcare Economist (tied for 54th),
- Medpundit and Healthcare Law Blog (tied for 61st), and possibly
- Managed Care Matters, which appears twice on the list (tied for both 71st and 88th).
We have yet to eclipse The Health Care Blog (tied for 7th), but Matthew Holt is on notice.
I am not convinced that Cato@Liberty’s health care content deserves that ranking, however. The “Cato@Liberty (Health Care)” entry on the healthcare100.com list links to Cato@Liberty’s main page, rather than the health-care content page. In contrast, the WSJ.com: Health Blog entry links to that blog’s health-care content.
I’m guessing that using the health-care-specific URL and RSS feed actually would tend to understate the popularity of Cato@Liberty’s health care content, since many readers presumably access our health-care content along with the rest. The health-specific RSS is certainly Cato@Liberty’s weakest suit in the healthcare100.com rankings. But when we edge out The Health Care Blog, I don’t want to hear any talk about asterisks.
A bigger concern is that Cato@Liberty’s strongest showing is in the “Technorati Authority Ranking” portion of the healthcare100.com algorithm: ”Technorati’s authority ranking shows the number of unique blogs that have linked to a particular blog over the past six months.” This must be capturing non-health-care-related links to Cato@Liberty. I hope the good folks at healthcare100.com will let us know if that’s the case and whether it can be remedied.
My favorite blog name on the list: Fingers and Tubes in Every Orifice (tied for 71st).