Comm J Market Notes
#59, February 2009
Blogging in Japan
Japan is the largest blogging country per capita, with 23 million blogs of which about 4 million are updated regularly. Of this, the overwhelming majority are personal blogs on mundane subjects.
Recently, my friend's blog became the #31 ranked blog on Japan's #1 blogsite. It is a blog about daily family life, raising their child, etc. Not a bad blog, but nothing mind-blowing either. So, I was curious how it became the #31 blog.
"At first, it was ranked somewhere between #10,000 and #15,000 in the blog rankings", he told me. "Then, I created a "robot" which visited many blogs leaving its mark. The counterpart blog-owners naturally paid a return visit to mine, and before I knew it, I was ranked in the top 800."
"At this point, it started to take on a life of its own. All the advertisers and affiliates clicked in, smelling a business opportunity. Random users came to the blog to see what all the interest was about. The more came - the higher the rank, the higher the rank - the more came. We reached #31 out of 55,000 sites."
"At that point, I did an experiment. The rankings are issued at 8:30 AM every day, so one day at 8:00 AM I changed my blog page's ad banner from this blogsite's ad to another affiliate's ad. That day, my rank fell to 1,574. I guess the blog rankings aren't just statistic-driven - there is a "guiding hand".
Well, it's probably not a Japan-unique story. But, it's an interesting one.