Do Featured Blog Features Work?

[Update: After you read this post, have a look at this similar post looking at the effect of being listed on Digg (via Steve Rubel).]

I've got a lot to say about (quantifying) how people get to blogs and how they move between them (part of the story is graph analysis, but there are other, equally important parts that I'm still cogitating on). Some part of the story is to do with featured blogs. I've often wondered: do featured blogs drive traffic? You can see featured blogs on Typepad and Technorati, for example.

Here is a single data point that suggests that they do work. On July the 6th, Typepad featured a blog called BookBurger. BookBurger uses the sitemeter service to measure traffic, and the details are visible to third parties. This graph, which shows visitors per day, shows a clear and significant peak on the 6th - the day of the feature:

Typepad featured BadHairDay on June the 23rd. Here are the stats:

Beyond the obvious spike, I think the key question is: does featuring bring traffic that sticks? I'm not sure if this question can be answered by looking at a couple of examples like this. It does look like this is true for BookBurger, but not so for BadHairDay.

Comments

[Mephy Mei]

Very insigtful data analysis,but maybe there is a little problem
I think BadhairDay has won continous clicks after being featured on typepad, the data showed that it has clearly climbing vistis. but you seem to have different opinions on this, you said"It does look like this is true for BookBurger, but not so for BadHairDay." but i just belive the contrary is right.

[Bad Hair Czar]

Actually, I feel the Typepad feature did give me traffic that sticks. Before the feature I had 300 visitors per day. The day of the feature the traffic did spike to almost 1000 visitors. But since then I have had about 550 visitors per day, an 80% increase.

Love this blog by the way, I love a good graph or table.

[Replica watcheswaz]

Frankly, the way things are right now, I'm not sure I'd want to play myself in my very own movie of the week.