For those who are interested in learning about health, using blogs in addition to more tradition forms of media is a great idea. I have personally been interested in learning about other health bloggers. Last month I found a great rescource that ranks the top 100 health blogs based on a number of factors.
Some of the factors that go into the rankings are Google page rank, yahoo inlinks, bloglines subscribers, alexa ranking, and technorati. The rankings are provided by eDrugSearch.com. If you have a blog, you can add it to their database so that it can start to be tracked according to the above metrics.
I checked out the blogs in the top 100 and was not particulary impressed. I feel their algorithm still could use some work. For example, I am not sure why they are not looking at RSS feed subscribers. I do not know enough about bloglines to know if it includes all RSS subscribers. Also many bloggers have argued that technorati is not really a very good means to base popularity and authority on.
Even so, using the top 100 health blogs can help you find other health blogs on the web you are not familar with. There will always be controversy in algorithms. Just look at the current controversy over the Florida vs Oklahoma BCS national championship game. Many argue Texas should be there. Even so algorithms are a most in today’s world and this top 100 health blog algorithm is one of the many ways to become more exposed to popular health bloggers.
Having some much health care information online is fantastic as it allows users to perform some research and become more informed on their topic. Before we had to take the professionals word for it.