TechCrunch Data
(via Scoble) Haven’t had much time to parse this yet, but Yuvi did a great analysis of TechCrunch.
As we were talking about internal linking a few weeks ago, I will just focus on this:
TechCrunch links the most to itself. Atleast (sic!) 14 times more than the nearest content contributor, which is google.com. The links to all the TechCrunch group of sites (TechCrunch, CrunchBase, CrunchGear, TalkCrunch, CrunchNotes) make up 32% of all outbound links. Almost 1/3 of all links are to TechCrunch’s own sites. That’s the data. Interpret it your way.
Here are the raw numbers of links:
- techcrunch.com 6365
- crunchbase.com 1146
- technorati.com 722
- google.com 432
- yahoo.com 356
Yuvi doesn’t like the Crunchbase links either, but doesn’t seem to mind them too much. I, on the other hand, consider most of these links ‘false advertising.’ How hard can it be to mark them somehow if Gawker can do it (<- beware, internal link 
)?
Also, I don’t think the CrunchBase game has been around for too long (three months?), which would mean that it is possible that percentage-wise, the CrunchBase has taken over a lot higher percentage of overall links in just a few months. Yuvi’s analysis doesn’t take that into account, as he only looks at the aggregate numbers.
Update: Yuvi crunched the number for TC for the months since June – since then, almost %50 of links are to the Crunchbase and other TC properties. See his comment below.
Scoble says that he links to his link-blog a lot himself, because “that’s where the good stuff is.” But a link that has the good stuff will take you to the site you expect to be taken to, not to a site that only inflates the publisher’s page views.
I guess it makes sense to link internally sometimes. Maybe. I have hardly ever seen a real reason to do it here on my own blog. But then I ain’t no TechCrunch either.
Technorati tags: arrington, techcrunch, cruncbase, linking, blogging, yuvi
