Another Good Reason to NOT Have a Blogroll

I don’t like Blogrolls. While they do serve a fine purpose, allowing visitors to see other blogs they might like, and sharing the link-love is always good, I don’t do them. My reason will be clear in a second, first let’s read about the stink happening in the political blog world from The Galloping Beaver

Amnesty is granted to those who are guilty of something. Their act could be construed as somewhat ruthless. They expunged their blogrolls of many of the smaller blogs. In a world where links determine things like Google page rankings, they committed many well-written blogs to the morgue by dropping their link to them. They had used a lot of the links to achieve a standing and once there, slammed the door.

So what has happened, in summary, is a couple of big-assed blogs have trimmed down their Blogrolls. The blogs discarded were mostly the smaller blogs who really benefited from those links and now are feeling both the snub and the traffic pain from the loss.

And so we get to why I don’t do Blogrolls. As a child in the playground I never liked the “who is your best friend” thing. Why do you have to have a finite number of best friends? What does it mean when you miss someone from your list? The intention is not always to hurt but hurt it does. Sometimes the absence from a best-friend or Blogroll list is meant as a snub.

In reaction the smaller blogs are taking up the cause and adding all and sundry to their Blogrolls in a bigger-blogroll-is-better sentiment. Problem is, you can’t add everybody. Who is going to be unlucky? Saying welcome-one, welcome-all is all well and good but makes it even more painful when you then say “… but not YOU“.

Make it easy on yourself. Don’t have a Blogroll. If you like a blog, link to their posts when they write something interesting. Saves us all a world of pain and hand-wringing.