Thursday, May 20, 2010

50 Best Blogs for Genealogy - from OnlineUniversities.com

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A list of the 50 Best Blogs for Genealogy Geeks was posted on the OnlineUniversities.com blog yesterday. The list is in four parts - General, Specific Research Projects, Libraries and Resources, and News. There are 11 to 14 blogs listed for each category.

Genea-Musings was listed in the General category, and I thank the blog authors for the mention.

It is unclear if the blogs are listed in some order of preference, in other words 1 to N in each category, or even 1 to 50. I don't think they are, and I don't think readers or bloggers should treat them as numbers 1 to N. They were, I think, chosen without any order whatsoever.

When anybody lists a "Top 50" or some other number, I really think that they should make their selection criteria known. This may be another list of "Genealogy Blogs that I read and you might like" similar to the MyHeritage list we recently read.

There were several blogs on this Top 50 list that were not in my Bloglines reader, so I added several of them. The OnlineUniversities.com blog was not in my Bloglines but it is now, although it doesn't return the blog posts for some reason (I think the RSS feed doesn't find the blog, only the website).

I have resisted making a list of my favorite blogs, although I try to select one each week for Follow Friday. I note that many of my Follow Friday blogs are not on this list. That's OK - we all have favorites.

2 comments:

Lee Drew said...

Randy, a couple of my blogs are on the onlineuniversities list and I, like you, think the list is in no specific order.

As I checked the ownership of the onlineuniversities site, it has changed ownership many, many times and web hosting sites even more often.

The 'Best Of' or 'Top X' lists are very good ways to drive select special interest groups to their site for little to no cost.

Marketing on the cheap or on the smart? It is ok, because all of the sites on the list have great genealogy content and we all enjoy reading them.

Look at the onlineuniversites site and see exactly what it is selling or doing and you'll get a better appreciation of their marketing focus.

Scott Jangro said...

They're smart marketers for sure. These guys know what they're doing. And the pay-off is big too; pushing online degrees is good money.

There's nothing like a list of "top blogs" to get those top blogs talking about it and linking back. Add in a little controversy like the MyHeritage top blog list recently and it's an attention and inbound link bonanza.

Look through onlineuniversities.com's blog archives and you'll see some pretty random topics for a site about online universities.