I was checking my stats the other day, something that I do compulsively, and I noticed a new blog linking to The Sports Logo Pundit. It's been a long time since a blogger linked to The SLP. I get a lot of traffic through other non-blog sites, but there are very few blogs that link there, so naturally I was exited.
I usually will automatically link to you if you link to me so I checked out his site hoping to add him to my blogroll. It's a new site that hasn't been up for very long, but he is a long established blogger that had his old site go belly up. I guess he linked to me before and I think I even posted a comment, but I must have forgotten about him and never fully examined his site. One of the first things that I look at when reading a new blog is the sidebar and the blogroll, it gives a lot of good insight into what the blogger is all about.I have a long standing policy of not linking to people who make it loud and clear that they are Republican and crazy conservative. You know the sidebars and blogrolls that I'm talking about. Full of conservative buttons and blogrolls linking to Drudge and big "Stop The ACLU" banners and whatnot.
I'm under no illusions that there is nobody reading my blogs from the complete other side of the spectrum politically, especially readers of my sports blog, and I don't care if my readers are Republican or not. But when it comes to promoting a blog to my readers, if I see those buttons, I usually just move on.
So when I came across this blog and his blogroll, the first two things that jumped out at me were the names Michelle Malkin (just barely a step down from Ann Coulter) and Olbermann Watch (a consvervative site bashing my favorite cable news host, Keith Olbermann). Normally, Michelle Malkin would be enough for me to hit the back button, but he also has links to The Huffington Post and A Work In Progress, both fairly liberal blogs. Color me completely confused.
I guess it was a bad joke about Al Franken running for office that ultimately made me decide not to give him a link, but I did debate long and hard about it. It just really bums me out that my blog has a fan that I cannot give love back to.
So what do you do? How do you decide who to link to or not to link to? Do you feel bad like I do when you can't justify linking back to somebody?
8 comments:
so you only linked me because I linked you? I feel so unspecial now.
Ooops, did I miss the point again?
PS... 2much411 is dead. I killed it a month or 2 ago.
I don't even use my blogroll anymore and will be deleting it completely when I move off of Blogger. I use Bloglines exclusively to read blogs, and I've got over 150 blogs on there. I think my blogroll only has 25-30.
Every once in a while I'll check to see if anyone new has linked to me. I'm not as obsessive about it as I once was. And I'll read a little bit of their stuff and maybe comment. Then I judge whether to link to them or not on how the relationship goes from there. If there is reciprocal talkback and whatnot, and I continue to enjoy their writing, I'll link.
Same goes with a rookie commenter to my site. I'll visit them and check things out and see how it goes.
Unqualified reciprocity is my main guideline. The only other rule I have is that if a blogger has more than one blog that links to mine, I only link to their main blog, not all of their blogs.
My blogroll actually has a whole other function. If someone links to me and I go find their site worth reading for SOMEONE, then I will link it back. I don't use my Blogroll for MY reading but for anyone who comes to my site that likes to click on links and read.
I use Google Reader to keep track of what I read and that way no one really knows who I do and don't make time for.
I too am a recommendation blogroller, not a blogroll reader.
This is an old post, but I'm responding anyway. I'm cool like that.
I link only to blogs I like. Simple as that. If I am going to read your blog on a regular basis (I like the content or I know you in real life), than I link to you.
I just can't get on board with linking out of obligation. Not that I'm some wildly popular blogger (far from it), but I think my links are a reflection of me- just like you're saying with political tendencies- and I like to keep as little crap cluttering my site as possible.
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