What do YOU call your blog?
Wondering how people name their blogs is an old question, never answered to my satisfaction. Fortunately the Blogwise directory hosts a list of 33810 blogs. Extracting the names of each blog from the directory itself took some work, but the result is this text file of blog names, one per line. Now that I got the raw data, it’s time to go to work.
Quickly coding a solution in C#, I wrote a program to tokenize the blog names by whitespace and punctuation, and place the resulting words in a hashmap for counting purposes. This gives a tab-delimited (paste into Excel!) text file of words used in blog titles and their frequency. Here’s the top 10 breakdown:
The top word, used in 9.986 percent of the blogs surveyed was “blog.” The next most popular, at 2.619 percent, is “life.” Here’s the top 10 words in a blog’s name:
- blog – 9.986%
- life – 2.619%
- weblog – 1.841%
- world – 1.296%
- from – 1.226%
- journal – 1.139%
- news – 1.087%
- thoughts – 1.039%
- with – 0.670%
- daily – 0.660%
This leads me to conclude that any blog named, “My blog/journal/weblog with daily world news and thoughts from life!” will be a smash hit. If you’re interested, here are the top 10 words from the Technorati popular blogs:
- modblog
- daily
- girls
- suicidegirls
- nikki
- weblog
- media
- from
- page
- boing
As you can see, there is little overlap between the top 100 blogs, and the population as a whole. Part of this is the tiny sample size–I don’t have enough blog names to harvest interesting words. The other part (which is pure speculation) is that unique blogs use unique words in their names. Continuing deeper into the data, a look at the top 750 words shows an interesting trend:
This is the famous “long tail.” Basically, some words are extremely popular in blog titles, and the rest of the words are ranked relatively equally, with a slow decreasing trend. Number 3045 and 6078 are only 1 mention apart, in the 33810 blogs surveyed. Here are the top 100 words used in popular blog titles:
- blog
- life
- weblog
- world
- from
- journal
- news
- thoughts
- with
- daily
- girl
- mind
- what
- this
- diary
- musings
- online
- about
- just
- ramblings
- random
- your
- adult
- love
- content
- little
- that
- home
- blue
- time
- marketing
- blogs
- right
- digital
- things
- city
- rants
- internet
- like
- free
- journey
- words
- business
- more
- notes
- place
- real
- house
- american
- view
- stuff
- music
- black
- chronicles
- tales
- times
- diario
- dreams
- another
- adventures
- inside
- corner
- other
- photoblog
- confessions
- book
- living
- soul
- head
- heart
- search
- truth
- live
- reality
- good
- brain
- here
- vida
- geek
- through
- eyes
- thought
- blogging
- politics
- personal
- page
- site
- days
- dream
- john
- thinking
- have
- left
- road
- something
- lost
- project
- into
- media
- where
- design
- conservative
- star
- mundo
The rankings go a little bit over 100, because the last few entries are all used with equal frequency.
| This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 21st, 2004 at 9:42 am and is tagged with trend number, interesting words, hashmap, whitespace, raw data, boing, punctuation, speculation, satisfaction, blogs, population, girls, blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback. |
I just started my blog and named it Fine Wine B…because we only get better with age.
My blog is called: “Hell on Heels: Diary of a Mad White Woman” alluding to Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Hell on Heels cuz Im a bad a** chick!
mine’s “The Diary of Me: Enter if you Dare” thanks for ut help
I always like finding out about how people name their blogs. In some cases, it is random, others obvious and then there are those cases (more often than not) that there is a cute little creative story somewhere in there as to how their blog name came about…those are the ones I like most.
http://ambloguity.blogspot.com/2010/08/naming-blog.html Visit this site for some tips! it really gave me some inspiration
I’m thinking about starting my own blog, would Sweet Memories be okay? I guess I kinda relate to it, since I think life was so much simpler as a kid.
Very interesting post that has obviously held up extremely well over time (6 years already). It does not include any editorial judgment as to whether popular is better, other than your proposed “smash hit” blog title and the fact that your rather bland blog title has not kept this article from being widely read. While I’m not sure of the importance of what a blog is called, interesting article titles certainly are important.
hmm here’s a one tip.. lets say that a COOL blogname should start like this ..”I Call It…” and the rest of the name you can make u r self
sry my english im from finland..
hah my blogs called “cloud infinity and beyond!” its a mash-up of the saying…”your on cloud nine.” and the old buzz lightyear shout…”to infinity and beyond!” thats creative huh? cuz really im so high in the clouds im a another planet
I call my blog “has yet to be named”, because it has yet to be named.
Hi Thanks for this list. My blog is named TechieMania which got the tech word in the domain itself.
I think naming a blog or site is the most important thing & you are really helping in this topic with your posts.
I recently launched a blog called C-Cookies. It’s for C-level IT executives:
http://bobmblog.wordpress.com/
I called mine “you’re in my head now” because it’s true, my blog is a raw veiw of me, I write stuff that not even my friends and family know about me, you if you read it, you’re basically in my head
u can find some (random!) original names using blog puns at ambloguity.blogspot.com
KARMA
I started blogging with names I thought would be clever, like “Glob Blog,” etc. But then I realized that by naming my blog after my old art gallery/video production business, Daisybrain, I’d have instant name recognition with at least a few dozen people. So http://www.daisybrain.wordpress.com it is, and I like it.
Blog’s name “Frozen Lemons”, according to this article very unique. Check the blog yourself on http://blog.frozenlemons.com
Great analysis – i agree above all.
thanks.
Hey there! Awesome post! Especially loving the graphs! I started a blog a little while ago about my return to college and dubbed it “The College Sequal~ A College Dropout’s Return to College” but I figured that the name had way too much college in it to draw in a decent reader following. SO… I decided to change it, but had some problems with figuring out what to call it. I settled recently on “Quarter Life Crisis” of “QLC”. I don’t know what to think about it. What do you guys think of the name?
actually i call it Lifetime Blog
oh…well i call mine–>Patricia anne calvo: the diary of a pink lover
well im just stuck on ideas full stop. i wanna do a blog bout life but cant think of a catchy title
Great analysis. I guess, best choice is choosin’ what u know best.
[...] to this article, any blog named, My blog/journal/weblog with daily world news and thoughts from life! will be [...]
I agree above all though I herd if you have WP blog the best way to ttitle it would be News Blog
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hi are you all mond
Ha, I bet mine escapes. It’s Hermy Paix.
DOes name of blog has any contribution towards traffic or you think that it doesnt matter till the time the content is good.
[...] There are probably easier ways of doing this if you are looking to name a blog or even your start-up. You might want to be careful, though, or you might end up being a bit perverse sounding like the unfortunate Utterz or Profilactic. When in doubt, just take whatever word you want and spell it differently (i.e. Cuil) or drop the “e” (Flickr, Tumblr, Zooomr, Twitxr, etcr.). Or lastly, you can just take two or more blog pertinent words and smoosh them together to get a great blog title with instant popularity. You are welcome to try any of these: DailyBlogThoughts, BlogLifeWorld, BlogPageLife, DailyThoughtBlogJournalWorld. For more on naming your blog, check out this article. [...]
SEO is very important if you want traffic to your blog.
I call my blog “FashionSqueeze” whaddya think about THAT ONE?
Well……. i recently opened a new blog and named it “Rendezvous with myself” hows it ?????
that is a great blog title!
sounds like your playing with yourself.. lol.
thanks so
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YAY for TechieNATION.COM !
HEhehehe, that’s what I call my blog ..
I think this is an interesting question.
Here you can find more information. http://live.com
[...] This list was called from research I found on this page. [...]
[...] Perhaps that’s why so many blog titles and descriptions are so self-effacing. Incoherent Ramblings, Another Blog, Just Another Blog…. Take a brief look at the top 100 words used in blog titles. First is “blog,” third is “webblog.” Ok. But #17 and #21 are “musings” and “ramblings”, respectively. #20 is “just”–signaling humility. #22 is “random.” People don’t know what blogs are when they begin. [...]
I’m trying to come up with a more catchy title for my blog. In the past it was “Crazed’s Musings”, “Random Ramblings”, “My Blog”, all those usual words used in a blog title. Not much in the creativity department. A blog title should reflect the blogger and the blog’s general focus. Of course it would help if my blog was more frequently updated!
This article wis very informative. The most used words in blog titles were right there in my own blog!
[...] Also I read another blog a while ago about the words most used on blogs. My blog title has none of the top 10 blog title words within it. Then again it only has two words. A problem? Perhaps, BUT when we come to most used words within blogs, and “blog” is the most used word and look! it appears… 12 times! And I’m not dedicated enough to go through the rest of the list and make relations to this first post. [...]
Sure sounds like you have a love of statistics. Cheers to you!
[...] Back, E. (2004) “What do YOU call your blog?” Retrieved on September 25 from the world wide web: [...]
[...] A couple years ago, Elliot Back took the initiative to survey 33,000+ blogs to discover the most common words used in blog titles. While the blogosphere has evolved somewhat in recent years, his results are still fully relevant when searching for a name for your new blog. [...]
As many people says to me that I can talk or write about many things in life than noone, and because everybody says that I’m courageous on talking about specific issues (and I know that I am), I have names my blog as my personal portrait, i.e., as everybody sees me… the “Single Mind”.
Usually people reads the title. If the title is attractive, they will read the message, otherwise they’ll pass. You can not do this reading my blog. I have a lot of irony on the messages, and the titles are mostly ironical. So… a boring title for you can contain a wonderful message. Or… a suggestive title for you can turn you bored on reading the message.
That’s it… it’s me, my personality. Only really who knows me reads the blog.
Not only the name of the blog is important but just as important is the post titles. The Page Optimization WordPress plugin adds a subtitle field to your Write Post page and then puts that subtitle in line with your title.
Title Optimization: Balancing Understandable Titles & Targeting Your Keywords
http://seo.seocompany.ca/title-optimization/
Here is how I set up the code on my blog.
Blog Titles: Code to Setup Titles & Meta Descriptions
http://seo.seocompany.ca/blog-titles/
I named my new blog NEWLEAFTIMES because it represents the tips and thoughts that I plan to post regarding little things we can do to turn a new leaf in our lifes. Also, newlifetimes was available as yahoo mail AND I plan to open an Outreach Support Services business called New Leaf Outreach.
Have a great day.
A very interesting post. Thanks.
I offer an explanation for the name of my blog AT THIS LINK
[...] The next step is choosing a name for your blog. I can’t even remember how the name LuckyRenee came about, but one day, it just was. Read this article by Elliot Back for some insight. Whichever name you choose, make sure it reflects you and your blog. In addition to a username, a pseudonym, or pen name, is often used by bloggers to protect their identity. Read this article by Moira Allen, editor of Writing-World.com, when considering using a pseudonym. [...]
[...] On this blog I would like to be able to talk about anything that is worth talking about, regardless of the subject. I will discuss sailing, music, travel, family, friends, news, politics, work (yes, even work), faith and other subjects.. For that I need to change the name of my blog. Any suggestions are welcomed. I just read a post on naming a blog which has some interesting data. [...]
[...] 30 Jan 2007 Naming your Blog Posted by Jaffer under General , Web While searching for a good name idea for my blog, Icame across Elliot Back’s research on the top 100 list of words used in blog names on the net. I’ve got ‘daily’ in mine, which is #10 . I’ll change the name to something more meaningful once I decide what direction I want this blog to take … [...]
I chose the name Bytes from the Back Seat for my blog because I drive a cab and the word Bytes can do double duty. ie I record sound bites from my cab on my blog in computer bytes. Sure the spellings not the same but I like it.
Eat My ******* Stilettos pretty much sums up my f-you attitude to the world of hypocrites, morons, and losers.
Plus the fact that I like to wear stilettos doesn’t hurt, either.
[...] I read somewhere that the blog name and blog titles should be terms that people often key into search engines. It needs to be snappy and memorable and should say something about you or the business you do. According to Elliott Back’s article, What do YOU call your blog?, the top three search words are “blog”, “life” and “weblog”, so if you have these terms in your title, it’s more likely that your blog would be featured in search results and hence is more likely to be read. Des Walsh in his article Choosing Your Blog Name advises businesses to include their business terms in the titles. So if you are a plumber, you should have a name such as plumbingworks.wordpress.com. [...]
So…
My weblog with thoughts on life and daily journal of news from the world…
would work. 9 out of top 10 words used.
))
Great article and analysis – I have a humorous take on the naming process over at my own blog (StrayText) if anybody is interested.
I named my blogs “Health, Abuse, Terrorism and Poetry” because all my blogs were based on my title.
I think that”s very important.
Suranee
http://womenrain.blogspot.com
Oh, I made a comment on a very old post…but I dont have a clue…
” [name] goes nut”
“[name] wothout a clue”
…and that kind of names, are they good (I have a blog title like that… :-/ )
[...] Here’s some research on the most common words in blog names: What Do YOU Call Your Blog? [...]
[...] What do YOU call your blog? by Elliott Back (tags: blog name statistics) [...]
Interesting to say the least. Are we talking domain names or blog titles.
I think the domain should be short so I went with my last name. Lucky thing it’s a weird last name too.
For the blog title I went with ‘Your Financial Freedom” which I don’t see the list above either. Oh well….keep on posting.
-Terry
[...] Before I start, I should probably explain my choice of title. As many Scrubs or Colin Hay fans might know, it’s the opening lyric from the song “Overkill”. I could pretend that it has some deep, reflective meaning in the context of this blog, but to be honest, I chose it because it sounded nice. After all, there are so many blogs that can have “blog”, “life” or “world” in the title (Although, funnily enough, I am guilty of using all three in the past…). [...]
[...] Before I start, I should probably explain the title. As many Scrubs or Colin Hay fans might know, it’s the opening lyric from the song “Overkill”. To be honest, I chose it because I thought it sounded nice – after all, there are only so many blogs that can have “blog”, “life” or “world” in the title. (Although, funnily enough, I have been guilty of all three in the past…) [...]
[...] Readers of the best blog in Grandin have likely noticed I change my blog’s subtitle more ofthen than I change my underwear, and there’s a reason for that. Pure and simple, it’s an alteration of identity. I’m systematically destroying the old static self in the pursuit of the “best me”, and settling into patterns is something I don’t want to do anymore. There’s even been an interesting little study done on how people choose their blog’s “sub-line” or subtitle. LINK [...]
[...] Un article sur les titres de blogs : http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2004/12/21/what-do-you-call-your-blog/ [...]
yea, theres some reaaly interestin names thrown up here , some i have to say are quite dull though , i was writing a blog a couple of months ago and couldnt think of a name for it .. sent abt 4 hours thinkin abt somethin that appealed untill i realised how much time i had wasted … there it was it struck me like lightning ” waste of time ” , thats what i called my blog .. lol ..yeah i know its cheesy .. but wat the heck its better than weblog or life .. yuck
i picked the very first thing that came to mind when it was time to sign up. no regrets yet. found this from someone who is apparently seriously researching how to rename a blog!
my blog is called “Doja: Prettie on the inside.” subtitle “but you can’t see”
it is the daily postings of a vegan, libertarian pansexual girl in the midwest.
USA Today mentioned this post today: http://blogs.usatoday.com/techspace/2006/01/the_whachacalli.html
Small wonder then that my site’s name (curious? search Google for “Lapides”) just doesn’t make it! But I do get lots of traffic anyway.
[...] Elliot goes much deeper into the mire here. It’s no surprise that most blog names are intuitively descriptive, for that is the norm all product, service and company names. The result is a manky swirl of white noise. [...]
When a coaching colleague asked me for some advice on naming their blog, I said, sure, I’ll send you some comments. That was a week ago and I have a phone conference with that colleague in just over an hour from now, so I need to come up with some use
Hey guess what, I call my blog ‘Personal blog’ YAY…I’m the average blogger!
[...] Why the name “I Got Off My Assets”? Well, I was researching how people name their weblogs, I came across Elliot Back’s website which had some interesting statistics on what people are calling their blogs. [...]
don’t decieve ur readers. focus on blogging. content, not sill keyowrds, r the thing
hmm. mine’s also very common… Lifelog.
Mine is named “ACT LIII” or for those of you that don’t remember how to count in Latin… “ACT 53″… 53 is my age – next year it changes to ACT 54…
Interesting. The only thing, though, is that your method leaves out the crazy few blogs that don’t use any separation between the words in the title. For example, mine. It’s called “milkandsugar”. But then again, I can’t really blame ya, teaching a computer to separate words without any clear place where to separate them is quite the difficult task.
I appreciate that you keep your site going and allow comments. To me feedback is an interesting part of a website.
[...] d a quick squizz through this Des Walsh article, and an interesting Elliott Back article – What do YOU call your blog?. Neither article explicitly told me what to [...]
[...] s like there’s work to be done. For more information about blogging and naming, see What do you call your blog.
[...]
Choosing Your Blog Name
When a coaching colleague asked me for some advice on naming their blog, I said, sure, I’ll send you some comments. That was a week ago and I have a phone conference with that colleague in just over an hour from now, so I need to come up with some use…
I’m a “unique and special snowflake”.
How inspiring. Very interesting little bit of data you’ve rounded up here. Thanks for posting it.
Why do people have the same idiotic responses like “mine is called this and why doesn’t show up”? The point this was a survey of a limited number of blogs (33,000 if I remember correctly) and thus maybe your blog wasn’t listed. I’ll be the first one to tell you that each your blogs just like each of you is a unique and special snowflake that must be treated with care and concern. But let’s be real, most of it is probably bullshit and we’d be lucky of half of it was in english.
people search my name a lot. i like to look at the list of places my name comes up. probably because i am hopelessly shallow and narcis- narcci- narsi… vain. i’m still not sure why your site came up on a search result for onewetleg but interesting subject matter, nonetheless.
have fun.
now i know why my name came up here. interesting data. i’m sure i could somehow drop this ‘information’ at a wine and cheese party and impress strangers. maybe i’ll get my picture in the newspaper. i hope they don’t show the coffee spill on my shoes.
We compromised and put “blog” in the url but named the blog… All the RAve – the RAnts of RA, where I get to sound off about stupid things that bug me.
My blog is called “Divine Interception“, and out of all those words you listed above, I barely use any of them. I try to be as origional and thought provoking as possible. And… well, I get no traffic either.
The title usually doesn’t keep me from reading a blog, usually it’s the way a blog is designed or bad grammer that keeps me from returning. I hate the complicated sites that have these lame pop-ups saying, “++…I.<3.U…4Eva…++“, and other lame sayings. And title won’t save a lame writer as an administrator, if you ask my opinion.
Anyway… check me out at my site, I share it with friends and I’d love more readers. Enjoy your day.
Sure Sam!! Except that it statistically doesn’t matter, because you add two of the same probability together and then divide by two… ^_^
mines blog on blog. do i get extra points for blogx2?
What Do YOU Call Your Blog?
Here’s an interesting breakdown on the top words used in blog names. Elliott Back writes on how people name their blogs.
The top word, used in 9.986 percent of the blogs surveyed was “blog.” The next most popular, at 2.619 percent, is “life….
Well, fine. My OTHER blog is called The Grocery Cart Poet. Do those words show up on the List Almighty?
I haven’t seen the name of my blog on the list either. “Helmet Hair” (it’s a blog about motorcycle riding, if you where ever in doubt) But in the description I have the ever classic “blog”. I wonder if it’s good or bad to have these common words related to your blog.
I call mine “Tripe Soup” . I seem to get a lot of hits from searches, people looking for recipes and get mistaken for food blog.
I called mine “upsalt”, which is a literal translation of the dutch word “opzouten”. And that means something like: bug off!
@Bobbie: Haha–nice try, but even *you* cannot escape statistics. “Brain” ranks number 76, while “dump” falls lower yet, at 1052. Combined rank? 2% in obscurity.
@Ben, “Exception” ranks 28790, dead last. In fact, it wasn’t in any of the titles in my dataset. “Soul” is 68, while “humanity” is 3508. Your combined rank? 37% in obscurity.
@Magnoy, I would say yours is 100% not in my dataset
I think mine’s a little more original in title — I called it a Brain Dump.
Hmm don’t think any of the words of my blog title made it into the top 10. Guess that’s why I get next to no visitors – oh, and the lack of positioning and posts.
Exception is the soul of Humanity (www.droplet.com.au~/zensei/)
Top 10 Words Used in a Blog’s Name
Elliott Back has put together an analysis of the top 100 words used in a weblog’s name… blog life weblog world from journal news thoughts with daily (Via Google Blogoscoped)
magnoy’s’amsara
And speaking of average…I’m happy to see that I didn’t make it into the top 104, despite my very generic-sounding blog title.
My blog name is a little more mundane. It’s either just the topic of choice, or my name–how … average!
Also, the ever infamous lyric from a favourite band is always a good name for a blog. I am guilty of such an act.
Hi there
I Call my blog “public(MIND) – explanation:
“I believe in the network as a catalyst, as my consciousness, as a part of me. With PublicMIND I try to expand the dimensions for what I am, can and will! ”
Best Regards
Hans Henrik
I named mine alice says (in Spanish) much like Simon says, only I don’t get people to do anything.
[Blogosfera] Come si chiama il tuo blog ?
Carina ricerca sui nomi dei Blog. Pare che la maggioranza non abbia molta fantasia….
Fantastica l’ affermazione :
This leads me to conclude that any blog named, “My blog/journal/weblog with daily world news and thoughts from life!” will be a…
Hmmm. Very interesting. So would you recommend renaming my blog into the ‘dailygirlyblogweblog’?!