Here’s an overview of how Maryland blogs have done from January through October, 2010.
In the first ten months of this year, the 46 Maryland state and local blogs that release their site statistics recorded a combined total of 1,770,058 visits. That is 32% higher than the first ten months of 2009 (when they collectively totaled 1,341,387) and 95% higher than the first ten months of 2008 (when they totaled 906,864). The last four months have been the best period ever in the Maryland blogosphere.
Since 2009, most of the growth in the state’s blogosphere has been in liberal blogs and blogs that cover local areas. Readership in conservative blogs has grown by 11% between the first ten months of 2009 and the first ten months in 2010. Over that same period, local blog readership grew by 22% and liberal blog readership grew by 78%.
Here are the top ten state and local political blogs in Maryland, as well as the monthly site visit trend of the top five (MPW, Red Maryland, Annapolis Capital Punishment, PG Politics and Kevin Dayhoff Soundtrack) since June 2007. The counts show combined totals over the first ten months, while the chart shows monthly visits.
MPW has been the most-visited political blog in the state since December 2008 and has been number one overall since December 2009. We saw a spike in traffic during the primaries, recording 81,393 visits in September – the biggest month for any blog in the state in our records. In October, our traffic dropped back down to the levels of the spring. Lots of political blogs did well during election season. PG Politics and Monoblogue set internal traffic records during September, and Red Maryland had its second-biggest month then as well.
Here are the top ten locally-focused blogs in Maryland, as well as the monthly site visit trend of the top five (Inside Charm City, Just Up the Pike, Tales of Two Cities, Rockville Central and Rethink College Park) since June 2007.
Inside Charm City was once the biggest local blog in the state, but those days appear to be over. Tales of Two Cities (in Howard County) is now number one with Rockville Central a very close number two.
No mainstream media “blogs” release independently verifiable site visit statistics. Neither do Marylandreporter.com, Center Maryland or Patch.com. We took our best shot at measuring their traffic a couple days ago. Based on the data we assembled from Compete.com, it appears that none of the latter three sources come close to the readership of the state’s largest independent blogs.
Here’s one more measure comparing MSM sites and blogs: Google Reader subscriber counts. Following are the number of Google subscribers for a number of Maryland political blogs and news sites.
MPW: 437
Washington Post (all Maryland news): 354
Maryland Politics Blog (Sun): 282
Washington Post Editorial Pages (international, national and local): 211
Red Maryland: 189
B’More Green (Sun): 113
Maryland Politics Blog (Post): 101
Howard County: 86
Annapolis Capital Punishment: 84
Free State Politics: 80
Jay Hancock (Sun): 77
Getting There (Sun): 72
Legum’s New Line: 59
Baltimore Sun (all local politics stories): 57
PG Politics: 46
Monoblogue: 37
Darkness Rising: 36
Granola Park: 35
Baltimore Reporter: 24
Second Opinion (Sun): 23
Left Hand View: 12
Robert McCartney (Post): 9
On this measure, many independent blogs are competitive with the MSM.
That’s all for now!