Monday, June 30, 2008

Iain Dale v Political Betting...............no contest!

Iain Dale is very fond of biggin' himself up as the most read political blog in the country. However, the reality is that he is out hit 4:1 by Political Betting. Now, Mike Smithson is a well known Lib Dem, former Councillor and PPC, but his site is probably the most politically neutral in the country. Why? Because its focus is on the betting odds, not the political rhetoric. In contrast Iain (God bless'im) is overtly partisan to, on occasions, the point of hysteria! So I am pleased to see that Mike is taking on Iain's inflated claims by advertising just how popular his site is. Although, having met at a bbq on Saturday, he did slightly blot his copy book (!)- we were discussing the role John Major may have had in Gordon Brown's disastrous decision to abandon plans for an election last year, and for some reason got chatting about IDS. I said how impressed I had been when talking to him at an event last year. Unlike most politicos who talk to you with one eye over your shoulder in the hope of escaping/talking to someone more important (what do you mean it is only me that happens to?!), IDS did nothing of the sort. We must have spoken for at least 20 minutes with no sign of him wanting to escape. Mike pointed out that it may not have been my scintillating conversation, but because no one else would speak to him!





6 comments:

Haribo said...

Ha, seems like a fair point to me.

I entirely agree with this post; when people talk of the leading blogs they always reel off names like Guido and Dale. It's about time we all starting mentioning pb.com ahead of both.

Also, there was this article recently showing Guido to be significantly higher than Dale in terms of hits:

http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11053170

In mitigation, I also remember some queries being raised about the methodology behind the rankings it cites.

Anonymous said...

Yes but ... the comments are overwhelmingly right wing

Linda Jack said...

anonymous..........and your point is? Perhaps it is just an indication that gambling appeals more to Tories!

Iain Dale said...

Linda, calm down dear! Mike does indeed get four times my page views. This is because many people sit on Pb.com all day or all evening pressing refresh, which each times counts as a page view.

So if you count page views as the most important measure, you are right, PB.com wins hands down.

However, if you count Absolute Unique Visitors (the number of people who visit a blog at least once a month) Guido comes out on top with about 100,000. I had 71,000 in May. ConHome is about the same I think.

Contrary to popular opinion, I do not big myself up. I merely post at the end of each month my readership stats and leave people to draw their own conclusions.

Linda Jack said...

Iain,

As any one who knows me will testify, I am renowned for my calmness! Whilst I accept that there are some people who sit on PB all day, (mainly Tories if "anonymous" is right) that does not account for all the visits. OK, point taken, you are really quite a shrinking violet :-)

Anonymous said...

Political betting and iain dale are both rubbish. Political betting is tedious anti labour bile. With every story spun to insult the labour party. It is a rubbish biased website, that dresses itself up as neutral. Morus and the other writers on it are boring oafs. Iain Dale has nothing to offer.