It's been funny tracking where The Average Angler sits amongst the "top" fly fishing blogs in the world. There's a company called Feedspot who compiles data from all types of social media platforms and ranks them based on several criteria, which the understanding of them all, such as Domain Authority, is far above my level of intelligence.
On April 5th I received an email from one of the co-founders of Feedspot, Anuj Agarwal, and he was letting me know I was ranked in the top and asking me to kind of share the Feedspot love on my blog.
A month later I finished up with school and started getting back into the rythm of fishing and writing. A quick check had me holding at #23, and there was a brief time I was down to #21. I always gauge myself with Troutbitten and Jeff Courier, who I seem to always follow behind by a spot or two.
I had a good month with lots of stuff to write about so I was surprised with the latest round of rankings. I dropped to # 34, a spot that I held probably 10 years ago. There were some other
surprises as well. April Vokey dropped from 14 down to 26, and Headhunter's Fly Shop took over the #1 ranking, knocking out MidCurrent. What's interesting to me, and I've commented about it before, is how do blogs get ranked when there are so many variations in what a blog truly means.
You see, many of the blogs you see in the top ratings aren't really blogs at all, while not in The Average Angler sense of the word. I see a trend now where online fly and commerce shops are linked in with the blog title. So if you click on the guide, fly shop, resort, and manufacturer you'll be brought to a page where you navigate around and can look for the blog postings. But first you have to get through the ads and categories of products available. Then there's the old hyperlink game where content is found by a content creator, or borrower, and a little brief is written about it, and then the link is made available. Basically, you're borrowing someone else's content. It's akin to what happened with photography back in the day, "We can't pay you but can give you byline credit". There's no one better at that than then MidCurrent, well it used to be Orvis.
Before leaving Orvis for MidCurrent in the fall of 2024 Phil Monahan ran the Orvis Blog, he had done it for years. He managed it, by posting content that people submit, wrote some stuff himself, and scoured the internet looking for content that he thought his readers may like. He now does that
at MidCurrent. What's amazing to me is that the Orvis Fly-Fishing Blog, which is now ranked # 2 in the world, has had two posts in the last 8 months. One on March 3rd and then one way back on November 25th. How do you maintain your ranking with no content? It's because the traffic and the clicks and numbers come from other "places" on their internet page, and all of those click numbers and social media followers just help boost their internet presence and rankings.
Some people use their social media presence to drive business. I did that when I started this blog in 2009 and it worked well. It helped my business and it was a place where clients could recap their day on the water with me, in a drift boat, on foot, or in the Jones Brothers. But with my last paying customer having been around 2018 there's no need for numbers or revenue, although getting paid for this would be a dream. But then you would need ads, and affiliations, and it would become work.
So I will lick my wounds and enjoy my time here again in the 30's. I'll let Feedspot do their thing and will check in from time to time to see where the blog bounces to next. They take the
task of managing social media stuff very seriously and have a huge staff that I guess I could contact if I wanted to see how I can improve my Feedspot game. In the meantime this blog will be all first person content, which I think is what a blog is supposed to me. But what do I know I'm now at # 34 in the world.
