It is commonly said that blogging is dead. The refrain has increased in frequency over the past year or so, as Twitter extends its influence further and further.

I have been blogging since 2002, when I was just 16. Over the years, it has been my favourite means of communicating online — more than Facebook or Twitter. More than IM and perhaps even email.

But increasingly I find myself becoming tired of it. Partly, this is due to that pesky “real life” nonsense taking over. As I make the transition from school pupil to student bum to full time worker, I have less and less spare time to dedicate to blogging.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that I am trying to run three blogs at once (the others being Scottish Roundup and vee8). In addition, I have started to write for other websites and have begun to dabble with podcasting.

Blogging is not what it once was

There have been many changes in the nature of blogging since 2002 as well. The emergence of other tools like social networks, microblogs and tumblelogs has encroached on territory that blogging used to inhabit.

In 2002, blogs were the best (or only) way to interact with friends online. It was pre-MySpace, never mind Facebook. Back then, blogs were a good way to publish snippets of transient, inconsequential thoughts — to get stuff off your chest. Now, Twitter is ideal for that. For those who feel too constrained by the 140 character limit, you can always set up a tumblelog.

But now that these new tools exist, blogging has been forced to become a medium where you publish more in-depth thoughts. Without a doubt, I update this blog much less often than I used to. In 2004, I published 880 posts. This year I might just about get above 100. But five years ago many of my posts were extremely short. Now, to justify even touching my blog, I feel like I have to produce an essay.

There is also the fact that I posted a lot of nonsense when I was younger, whereas now I have to be more responsible with the way I update my blog. I need to come across well, which means I have to quite carefully consider everything I publish.

In short, blogging is now hard work, whereas beforehand it was just good fun. None of this is news. But today, a couple of things have again focused my attention on blogging.

Where are the new readers?

Firstly, Jeff at SNP Tactical Voting wrote a post announcing “the death of blogging“. He senses a general malaise in the blogosphere. According to him, there are few new readers. Moreover, some big Scottish blogging names have hung up their keyboards in the past few months.

In response to Jeff, I would say that I don’t think a year has gone by when a big name hasn’t given up blogging. But blogging life goes on. While I am not happy to have seen the likes of Scottish Unionist and Malc in the Burgh close down their blogs, and others dramatically decrease the frequency of their updates, blogging is not about who the big names are. It is about the conversation between bloggers.

Jeff may well be right that there are fewer new readers though. In terms of statistics, the best days of this blog are certainly long gone. Visitor numbers peaked in 2006 and 2007, and have steadily declined since. This is in stark contrast to the early years, when readership grew seemingly exponentially, as though it were viral. In fairness, you should expect this if you publish much less, as I do. I doubt the same applies to Jeff though.

Twitter increases in authority

Perhaps more ominous in terms of the value of this blog is not the fact that readers appear to be losing interest, but the revelation that Google appears to view my Twitter account as more authoritative.

It hadn’t occurred to me before to check what the PageRank of my Twitter account might be. I assumed it would be low. But having read, via Andrew Hayes, an article about PageRank and Twitter, I decided to check.

I was astonished to find that my Twitter account apparently has a PageRank of 5. In comparison, this blog today has a PageRank of 3 (a shadow of what it used to be).

Of course, it is probably wise not to focus much on the importance of PageRank. Google itself increasingly plays down the role of PageRank. Of course, that hasn’t stopped them from using PageRank as a means of publicly “bitch-slapping” websites that it views as threatening its advertising revenues gaming its search engine.

PageRank is the one small window provided to webmasters who want to see what Google really thinks about their websites. For my Twitter account to be clearly rated higher in this way than my blog has come as a surprise. I am not even the most prolific of Twitter users.

So is the blogging era over? I couldn’t have articulated this in 140 characters or less. But if few people are going to read it anyway, and if even Google doesn’t care so much, it makes me wonder what the point is any more.

An hour or so of my evening has been poured into writing this post. Soon I will have even fewer spare hours to spend on blogging. I persevere with blogging because I think it is, in a way, important. But if Twitter is easier (which it undoubtedly is) and has more impact (which apparently now it does), is there much point in continuing?

Some bloggers are in a flap at the moment because Google has seemingly manually downgraded the PageRank of some websites. The reason appears to be that the websites in question sell paid links.

Some of the websites in question are pretty big. Washington Post, Engadget, Weblog Tools Collection, Joystiq, Problogger.

This blog also sells text links, although I don’t think I’ve been hit by Google’s bitch-slapper. My PageRank at the moment is 5, which I think is what it was before. I don’t actually know, because I don’t really care about my PageRank as much as, say, my Technorati authority or the number of visitors.

Anyway. There are text link adverts on this blog. I was aware that the people who were buying the links were almost certainly more concerned about “buying” a better ranking on Google than something such as click through rates or trying to reach out to the readers of this blog.

But I hate to see junk results on Google, for sure. But do I feel guilty about selling links that contribute to this? No. It is individually rational for me to sell these links, despite the fact that I detest the method.

Why? Because if I am selling the links, I make money from them. If I am not selling the links, Google results are still equally junky because so many other people are doing the same thing. So I have two choices. Either I live with junky Google results and make no money, or I live with junky Google results and make some money. It’s a no-brainer.

Funny, though, how the changes leave Google AdSense completely unaffected! What a coincidence. When you look at how Text Link Ads (probably AdSense’s only real competitor) has been penalised to hell by Google, it begins to look like hypocrisy at best and a powerful Google using its might for “evil” means at worst.

However, it is understandable if Google takes a hard-line stance. They strive to have the best search engine on the internet, so of course they will do everything in their power to stop the “sale of PageRank”.

Their latest moves probably change the landscape a bit. It might put some advertisers off, but I doubt it will put any webmasters off. For as long as the webmasters make one penny more by selling adverts than by not, they will continue to sell adverts.

Of course, the reduction in PageRank could mean fewer people visiting via Google’s search engine. But I doubt many webmasters will be licking their wounds over that. From my point of view, for sure Google accounts for about two thirds of visitors to this website. But that is the least valuable two thirds (I don’t mean ‘valuable’ in monetary terms here, I mean in terms of their contribution to the website).

People who visit this website via Google view fewer pages than an average visitor. They are more likely to take one look at one page and then swiftly leave, never to be seen again. They spend an astonishing 30% less time on this blog than the average visitor. According to Rhys, he gets hardly any visitors from Google in the first place.

So if my PageRank takes a battering, I won’t be too bothered about it. Because Google provides none of the things that I value about blogging. Regular visitors are more likely to come via a link on another blog. And the best comments come from regular readers rather than the flash-in-the-pan visitors who might leave personal abuse then exit and forget all about this blog.

Come to think of it, I am the same when I use Google. I never expect to find the best websites by going to Google. If something is worth reading, I am likely to hear of it by word of mouth, either by reading other blogs or via links from my friends on Delicious, or whatever.

Meanwhile, if I want specific information, I am much more likely to search for it on Wikipedia rather than Google. Wikipedia might not be 100% reliable, but Google’s reliability is surely even worse. If I want a primer on any topic, Wikipedia usually gives me what I want.

What’s more, the links on Wikipedia are usually more relevant. Spam links are swiftly removed by the community of users. How many times has Wikipedia led you to a link farm compared to Google?

If I want information on a band I go to either Last.fm or Discogs. If I want to look up a word I use either Dictionary.com, Chambers of Urban Dictionary. Etc, etc. I know I still sometimes use Google, but what for? I can’t remember the last time I used Google search as anything except a last resort.