Thank you for reading

UPDATE
As of December 2011, Wikio's rankings have been ported to a company called eBuzzing. Even though the rankings continue to be updated, an error message appears when clicking on the link. Here's what Jay Brooks of Brookston Beer Bulletin had to say:

the name has changed from Wikio to eBuzzing. <...>

If you have a widget and clicked on the link, you may also have noticed that it goes nowhere, to a “404 Error Not Found” page. Several people have written me, wondering what’s going on, and sadly, I’ve been unable to shed any light on the situation. They’re not exactly showing that the North American market is very important to them or their business. Gerard Walen, from RoadTrips4Beer, posted on their UK blog and got the following reply:

"For the moment US rankings have not been incorporated into the site. We will notify you once the US rankings are once more included at the same high quality as our European rankings."

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It seems that today, 11 April 2010 —according to the website Wikio.com— Yours For Good Fermentables.com is the 26th highest ranked US-based blog in the Food and Wine category. No mention of beer.

First: What is Wikio?

Wikio.com is an information portal with a news search engine that searches press sites and blogs. ... It is the number 1 news aggregator in Europe [I blog from the USA.] indexing over 200,000 English-language sources.

Second: How are the rankings compiled?

Wikio bases them on links from other blogs. Here's how it describes the algorithm:

The position of a blog in the Wikio ranking depends on the number and weight of the incoming links from other blogs. Our algorithm accords a greater value to links from blogs placed higher up in the ranking.

A blog linking another blog is only counted once a month i.e. if blog A links to blog B 10 times in a given month, it is only counted as having linked to that blog once that month. The weight of any link decreases over time. Also, if a blog always links to the same blog, the weight of these links is decreased.

Only links found in RSS feeds are counted. Blogrolls are not taken into account.
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.

Third: I wonder about the methodology. There are several excellent beer blogs that did not make the cut. For just a few, peruse the blogrolls to the right.

Even so, for at least today, I'll take a wee bit of pride in what I've attempted to do since first going 'on air' in September of 2002: to spread the news of good beer —and wine, food, and spirits— and to correct misconceptions and bad practices that bedevil them. Sometimes I have been successful; sometimes, less so. In the process, however, I may have become a better writer; at least, I would like to think so.

Thank you for reading (and linking). There's much more to write.

Tracking:
October 2010: 26 (Wikio creates Beer category. YFGF still in Wine only category.)
September 2010: 19 (Upon request, Wikio moves YFGF to Wine, as no beer category exists.)
August 2010: 71 (Wikio separates Food from Wine category. Leaves YFGF in Food only category.)
July 2010: 22
June 2010: 20
May 2010: 20
April 2010: 26

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• The Top 100 Wikio rankings: here.
• Pete Brown's view of the whole Wikio ranking thing, from the UK: here.