What's wrong with the best blog in Seattle

The Stranger's Slog is still the best blog in the city. It's a must-read if you want to keep up on the daily (hourly!) drama in everything from the local music scene to Oly politics.

Still, the Slog has a big fat hole in it. The Sloggers have ignored the usual foundation of blog leaders -- smaller blogs.

Here's a look at the percentage of traffic referred to Capitol Hill Seattle from other blogs since we were born back in January. This doesn't include traffic from search engines like google and yahoo that send the bulk of our traffic. We got a lot of love from Metroblogging Seattle when they featured an article about our move to the Hill so it's a bit of an anomaly. But note just how paltry the output from the Slog is. It's the anemic blue slice at the top of the pie.

Believe it or not, our point isn't that The Stranger needs to point to our blog more. We just happen to have pretty good data that illustrates the problem -- The Slog doesn't link to local blogs. Instead, most of its links point to newspapers and tv sites around the world. Or the random porno myspace page.

For the most part, this kind of linking makes good sense. Just ask Matt Drudge. He's been making a biz of it for years. The risk for The Slog, however, is watering down the local audience it can offer to advertisers. With every link to the NY Times, Sloggers may attract a wider and wider readership but they risk damaging their ability to provide a solid Seattle audience.

Maybe there is nothing worth linking to. Maybe Sloggers have their hearts set on developing a wider following. Maybe a Seattle-specific audience isn't worth shit compared to being able to hawk cigarettes to urban kiddies from coast to coast. Or maybe Savage and crew just haven't thought about it. Since they don't seem to be reading, can somebody send them a link to this post? Maybe they'll link to us.

--j