Web Impact Factors for Blogs

Oh what a tangled web we weave... has just posted an interesting article on the problems of calculating the impact of a blog. In summary: Whilst a web site's impact has traditionally been measured by dividing the number of inlinks by the number of web pages (the Web Impact Factor), the feed aggregators are having such a disproportionately large effect on the results they are useless. Whilst this is true, this is by no means the only reason for dismissing the use of the traditional WIF in determining the impact that a blog is having.

Other important factors that need to be discussed are:
1. The use of 'number of pages' as a denominator.
The number of pages has been used as a denominator to normalise for the size of organisations, whereas in this case it is normalising for the quantity of output as each of the blogs only has one author. Do we want to assess the value of individual posts, or the value of the blog/blogger?
2. The effect of the blogger posting comments on other people's web sites.
Analysis of the links to my blog from external sites (after dismissing the feed aggregators) would find that I am the author of most of them. Commenting on other people's blogs often provides a link back to your own blog, although these tend to be to the blog's homepage rather than a specific post. Do we need to dismiss these links, or do they provide a useful indicator of a blogger's contribution to the blogosphere?

Any method we use to judge the value of a blog will have its promotors and detractors often depending on how well it portrays their own work. Therefore I think we should stick with the WIF, at least until such time as my own webometric thoughts slip down the table.

nb. as an aside(-ish) I have noticed that for the first time Webometric Thoughts has leapt above both of the other webometricians' blogs on a Google.com search for 'webometrics'. Maybe Google rank is the only important indicator as it has such a disproportionately high effect on the success of a web site that all other indicators are now merely a reflection of it.