Wikio Labs - who links here?

Thanks to Ollie over at the Red Rag for the tip to this one.
Those nice people at Wikio have an experimental section where you can type in the URL of your blog and it shows who is sending traffic your way by linking to you. It only works if both your blogs are indexed by Wikio and is still in the experimental stage so thought it would be good to see where most of my backlinks come from:

1. is the left-wing commentator and drinking buddy of Brew Wales, Fido at the Lone Voice. Fido was one of the reasons I started blogging as I got sick of people thinking his website was written by me!

2. Pete Brown's Beer Blog, Well Pete Brown is the top beer beer writer/blogger in the UK and I must get round to reading his books sometime.

3. Andrew Wilcox Media Wales' website guru and founder, organiser and generalisimo of Shed Week proves their is life outside of the shed with his blog on beer and photography, though beer does tend to dominate.

4. Pencil and Spoon Mark Dredge was the The British Guild of Beer Writers New Media Writer of the Year 2009 and its an excellent site.


5. Beer Reviews - Andy Mogg has a well-designed and innovative site, one I'm determined to spend more reading!


Well that's the top 5, not a bad little tool from Wikio and sure to use it more in the future.

Brewdog top dog on Wikio

The Wikio rankings for last month are out and Brew Dog have had the pre-announcement tip off this time. It comes as no surprise that they are top this month in the Wine and Beer section, their "Equity for Punks" launched last month attracted lots of debate and rumour in the blogosphere with everyone clicking on their site and linking back to it. What does come as a surprise is that there are now only 4 wine blogs in the top 20. Now compare this with the amount of coverage in the dead tree press wine gets compared to beer. Do these figures prove that there is more of interest in beer than in wine? With the exception of the 'Trumpet of Truth' ie, the South Wales Echo which has a weekly beer column written by the Brew Wales editor (blowing my own trumpet there) and the Western Mail which has a beer column by Brian Glover, the rest of the media in Wales; South Wales Argus, Swansea Evening Post, Monmouth Beacon etc, all ignore beer writing in general. Any surprise the blogs have taken off so well?

1	Brew Dog Blog (+1)
2	Pete Brown's Blog (-1)
3	Pencil & Spoon (=)
4	The Pub Curmudgeon (+6)
5	Woolpack Dave's beer and stuff blog (+3)
6	Tandleman's Beer Blog (-2)
7	The Beer Nut (+2)
8	Spittoon (-3)
9	Brew Wales (-2)
10	Stonch's Beer Blog (-4)
11	Bibendum Wine (=)
12	Called to the bar (+4)
13	The Bitten Bullet (-1)
14	The Wine Conversation (+1)
15	Jamie goode's wine blog (-1)
16	Impy Malting (+3)
17	Reluctant Scooper (+7)
18	Real Ale Reviews (+11)
19	Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog (-6)
20	On pubs and beer - screeds by jesusjohn (+37)

Wikio Rankings

Those nice people at Wikio have supplied Brew Wales with the latest monthly rankings for Wine and Beer Blogs for the UK and Ireland. Good to see that in top 20 more than half the blogs are beer related. When will the dead tree press give the same coverage to beer as they currently give to wine, as there is clearly a demand from readers for beer related news and reviews?




Anyway a bit from Wikio on how the rankings are compiled:

The position of a blog in the Wikio ranking depends on the number and weight of the incoming links from other blogs. These links are dynamic, which means that they are backlinks or links found within articles.
Only links found in the RSS feed are included. Blogrolls are not taken into account, and the weight of any given link increases according to how recently it was published. We thus hope to provide a classification that is more representative of the current influence levels of the blogs therein.
Moreover, the weight of a link depends on the linking blog’s position in the Wikio ranking. With our algorithm, the weight of a link from a top blog is greater than that of a link from a blog that is less well ranked.
Our rankings are updated on a monthly basis and also include Top Blogs for several categories: Technology, Politics, etc. New categories will be added on a regular basis.

Wikio Rankings for Wine and Beer

1. Spitoon
2. Brew Wales
3. Stonch's Beer Blog
4. Pete Brown's Beer Blog
5. Pencil & Spoon
6. Tandleman Beer Blog
7. Jamie Goode's Wine Blog
8. The Wine Conversation
9. Bubble Brothers
10. The Southport Drinker
11. Sour Grapes
12. The Pub Curmudgeon
13. The Beer Nut
14. The Good Stuff
15. Bibendum Wine
16. Bordeaux Undiscovered
17. Woolpack Dave's Beer and Pub Stuff
18. Drinking Outside the Box
19. Called to the Bar
20. Tyson's Beer Blog

Wikio Rankings

Well Brew Wales had a nice surprise today when the Wikio rankings for Wine and Beer Blogs in the UK appeared.
Hardly expected to be in the top 10 but the editor was more than a little pleased at the number 2 ranking, behind a wine blog, Spittoon, at number 1, but ahead of other beer blogs the editor regularly reads. This is very likely only temporary blip as there were a lot of hits for the Great Welsh Beer & Cider Festival. Still not bad to be at number 2 for a month and in the top 400 of UK Bloggers.

Of course this blog attracts its fair share of nutters, one of whom attempted to run a blog called 'Sane Brewer Responds' in an attempt to use the internet to declare his sanity to the world. Unfortunately this blog is no longer in existence as the disturbed individual could not even find anything to write to prove his sanity. Instead he has commanded one of his catamites to attack me on a different blog. Now I'm not going to name the person concerned, but there is a link to his malicious lies on the right hand link section, if the 'Sane Brewer' chooses to click onto his brewery link he will be taken to his loony-tune website. Naturally the author of the attack site blog refuses to identify himself and the coward hides behind the anonymity of a pseudonym. Oh and he also has comments turned off, despite the fact Brew Wales have allowed his unedited ramblings to appear on this site.
The photo of me used for the attack blog was also used without the permission of the photographer. Still copyright theft is just another item to add to the long list of dodgy dealings by this person, who I understand is related to European Royalty. At least I'm sure I've heard other brewers refer to him as a 'Count', or did i mishear?